I was about your age when I got "serious" about building models, meaning that at age 14-15, I started going for the realistic look, and started building dioramas full-bore... Oddly enough, that's about the same time-frame that I learned of Shep Paine and his dioramas for Monogram.. The first one was the B-17.
All during my "early" years (from about 13-30), I never quit building models... There was a group of 4 of us, all about the same age, that built models together in my folk's basement. Dad let me use his old workbench, a monsterous affair about 12 feet long with 6-inch wide shelves standing 3 feet high at the back of it. Any given day during the summer, at least two of us were building something there, sharing paints and the spare parts bins...
One summer, we built a diorama in the basement that was like 12 x 12 feet square and had complete (for us, anyway) Pacific airfield on it in 1/48th scale. We were all fans of "Baa Baa Black Sheep" and formed our own "Squadron". The background was that we were a combination of "Black Sheep" and "The A-Team", lol... Mercenaries fighting for the US in the PTO during WW2...
I had about 6 AMT F4U Corsairs on it, along with a couple Monogram Dash Fours, and a Revell B-25 (our squadron Hack), tents for us, and control tower. All the strutures were detailed on the inside, each one of us trying to out-do the other with creature comforts, lol... Also had a couple Wildcats, Spitfires, and even a "captured" Zero and AMT Ju-88 (Dunno how we got that one) and a P-36 Mohawk (AMT again) ...
I never "gave up" modeling for girls or anything else until I was about 40, lol... Even married, if a wife didn't like 'em, she went, not the hobby... (Actually, it's a lot more complicated than that, but you get the idea- Wimmens don't matter when it comes to my hobbies).