2013 I read a Wired article about Bitcoin and some homeless people in NYC that were "living" off it and that started my evangelism. I was in school and used the labs to log in and mine on up to 50 computers at a time. Faucets were still paying somewhat well then, the usb miners were affordable and my intro to mining. After that I found Bitbay (Still my biggest bag), Primecoin, and Protoshares the origin of Bitshares and Steem.
Regrets is a problem I deal with all too often. I am always on the poor side so I have used a bunch of my crypto over the past years for purchases. Seriously my biggest regret is having spent ANY of it. I feel like an asshole regularly when I think of the vast amount of tons of coins that I wasted.