Microsoft MVP Stories

I know some members here are Microsoft MVPs & I was just hoping if you guys can share your stories like:
1) what jobs did you do?
2) how did you manage to attain the skills you have? Courses, helping out in forums, etc
3) how many years have you been using Excel before becoming an MVP?

certainly not an MVP myself, but it's a dream of mine since i started to fall in love with this green little fella. i'm an accounting graduate & i started work in 2009. i had close to zero knowledge of Excel & my department then was using Excel pretty extensively. they were using array formulas, OFFSET, INDIRECT, etc. and it's not really common people use that in regular life outside of this forum. i guess i was pretty fortunate in a sense that i was exposed to such formulas. never in my later jobs, except for the current one, did i see such formulas.

i began to love how formulas can significantly simplify my work & joined my current company that does Excel stuff back in 2012. that's when i began to get more involved in this forum & found myself improving. still not there yet, but i'm hoping 2-3 years later, i'll be able to shamelessly nominate myself with confidence if i'm not yet an MVP. not sure if that's too soon or too long.

hoping you guys can share too. =)