I started "creating" characters when I made my persona, Nadya. I gave her two friends, depression and anger (Catherine and Ixia respectively).
Ever since then, they've grown alongside me while preserving aspects of my younger self. Overtime,
I learned how to write characters (I was planning on becoming a full-time writer when I was in sophomore year of high school),
I joined TTRPG games and created player characters, I also just wanted to tell stories.
Now, I have a roster of children that I lovingly call my OCs. Pedants may raise their eyebrow at this term,
adjusting their glasses as they say, "The term Original Character only works in fandom spaces, to refer to regular characters as OCs is superflous" is being a dickhead about it.
Seriously. Learn how to gather meaning from context and learn how words can shift in meaning. Sorry. I saw this discourse
months ago and it bothered me so much. It's like that quote insisting that "hobby" could only mean mindlessly numbing distractions and cannot be anything more profound.
Like dude. It does. You're just being obtuse about its implied meaning.
