Running the hypervisors built in to unraid or truenas are certainly options but proxmox/VMware are just easier. If you’re learning about virtualization, you’re going to find a lot more resources for proxmox/VMware. Conversely the storage capabilities of proxmox/VMware are either severely limited in the case of VMware or just not particularly user friendly for proxmox. By virtualizing your storage OS you can get the best of both worlds for some situations. Sure, there are situations where it’s a bad idea but if you’ve only got one machine and it has plenty of resources it can be very effective.
Heck even if the main function for the NAS is just windows shares, that full blown storage OS is going to give you redundancy, snapshots, and replication. I’d say those are pretty important even for Windows shares.
Back before the Internet was really a thing I would sometimes reread some of the few favorite books that I owned. Like a lot of other posters, LotR was a staple though I did find myself skipping through the parts where things got slow. Jurassic Park and the Lost World were another set that I enjoyed every time through.
When I was much younger, I read all of the star wars books that I could get my hands on. A few years after I had stopped reading them, I randomly got bored and decided to check what new stuff had come out. I picked one out and got about 3/4 through before realizing that it was not a new book and that I had read it before. So much for retention!