I got into self-hosting a couple months ago after I started learning how to use Docker. I went from hating Docker (because I had only ever used it during hours-long attempts to build some annoying piece of software) to loving Docker because it makes configuring network-connected services so much easier.
For a while I was just hosting on my LAN from my desktop computer, but then I was out-of-state for two weeks and I found myself really wishing I had access to my self-hosted services while I was away.
Of course, I didn't just want to port-forward my computer through my router because that's a security nightmare, so I tinkered with a bunch of different solutions and landed on this one, which is working extremely well for me.