Oh geez...
Well, I've enjoyed writing stories for as long as I could remember. Growing up in a rural town, surrounded by some really fascinating places (The North Wales coast, basically!) was incredibly inspiring and I was fortunate enough to have been able to explore a lot of these places as a kid. Most of my stories at the time were particularly inspired by local folklore and ghost stories that had been passed down from generations back, but I also attached stories entirely of my own to certain places around where I grew up.
So, my love of writing stemmed from there, but as for actual Roleplaying, it wasn't until I was in my teens. The internet was only just becoming a big deal at the time, so a lot of people, myself included, didn't have internet at home, so access was gained either at the library, or in school. I remember being mad into Final Fantasy at the time. Final Fantasy VIII had just come out so there was a lot of buzz around the series and I joined this online forum called FF Extreme. They had a whole forum section for Roleplaying, which included story-based Roleplaying and battle-based Roleplaying. It caught my attention, and reading some of the stories that people were coming up with together was pretty inspiring, so I got involved. It kinda snowballed from there. There was a couple of occasions where I ran my own Roleplaying forum, to moderate success, and there were a few other sites I would Roleplay at. I kinda stopped when I hit my twenties due to work, social life, moving around a lot... I dipped my toes back into it for a while a couple of years later but family commitments made it hard to keep up with the pace of the more active Roleplayers, so I fell back out of it for a good few more years before ending up here.