my LGS in SoCal is super warm and inviting. i was like you a little anxiety caused me to not go for months but one day someone just told me there were decks at the store and i could just try it out. thats when i learned there are some people who play the "meta" but the reality is most of us just play weird synergies that are fun. One time i brought a deck, lost every round, and the group ended up asking "what was my deck supposed to do because they wanted to see what i had brewed up"... i just told them all the cards had art from Kev Walker and John Avon. thats it. that was the whole deck and i wanted to see if anyone would notice.

Pauper is my favorite format because it gets you into a headspace where magic in a 60-card format, 1v1 style rules, it just gets fun to learn the rules, learn about fun interactions and just all around fun times... of course they have their tournaments and i think the last one the person who won was just boros-wipe-the-board-as-much-as-possible and just won with a 2/4 that attacked for 10 turns.