Hi, Scrunchy, and welcome to the website!

Sounds like you just have a combative, confrontational personality.

I avoid religious people, but if I can't escape, and they start preaching at me, I look bored, say, "That's you, not me, " and glance at my watch without paying any attention to them.
If they keep on, I mumble, "Um, hum..that's nice.." and walk away.

It only takes a few times to train others not to bring up religion with me.

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I generally find myself tempted by three impulses to share my worldview in conversation with others. I realize that most of the time it is probably better that I don't, but sometimes I can't resist if the person makes the mistake of showing the faintest glimmer of interest.

The most selfish of those impulses is probably to receive validation of my ideas, which rarely is the actual outcome, but that doesn't stop me from trying!

The potentially more mutually beneficial motivation of the three is to ostensibly sharpen each other's game, so to speak, get to know each other better, and be as open to learning as teaching. That might be the most realistic possibility, when used sparingly.

Possibly the least selfish aspect of the motivation is that if I feel I have genuinely benefited from whatever recent epiphany that fate has bestowed upon me, then I sincerely wish I could share that benefit with others... but that is usually met with about as much enthusiasm as when I used to get socks for Christmas as a kid, so... other than with the unfortunate, captive audiences online (apologies)
I mostly just try to keep it to myself.

Nothing says you have to try to convince anyone of anything. It's mostly a fool's errand.

If there's anything I try to advocate for it's critical thinking. Get people turned onto that and religion and other magical beliefs take care of themselves. However ... most people don't want to be critical thinkers. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

Why is that? Combination of things. Fear that they can't handle bare-metal reality; operant conditioning; intellectual laziness and dishonesty; lack of self awareness; social pressure to conform; the constant promotion of religion by the elites as a tool of control for the masses. That's also why people constantly vote contrary to their rational self-interest and a whole lot of things not necessarily directly tied to religion. Whether it's religion or some other tool, swap out a working epistemology with a defective one and you can get people to do all sorts of self-harm and mutual harm.

I find you're trying to change others' beliefs as out of place as believers trying to change our beliefs.

Why bother ? It's like trying to convert the adoration some have for our present administration. No point.

Just do your thing, why not ?

I am not an atheist, but like you, I do not believe in God as taught by traditional churches.There are other options. I think each person has to find his own place. Some people need traditional religion—it is their comfort and they aren’t interested in rationality. Others have faith in scientism—it is their comfort. They think they are rational, but at heart they are as irrational as the most close-minded Bible thumper.

Everything starts with belief and experience not necessarily in that order. A lot of belief is grounded in some level of reason. Flawed likely but still leaps of logic and cause and effect leading to a greater truth or a recipe/method of action leading to a desired advantage or result. I think there is very little difference between the two extremes of the religious and the Atheist if both are set on converting people versus simply discussing the benefits and drawbacks of their viewpoints. My biggest issue with Atheism is the idea that a lack of proof in something/anything discounts its value as a tool for action or result. If ones belief in the unknown allows for some kind of peace or a call to positive action great. If it leads to destructive action then that is what needs to be addressed. The same for Atheism. If it leads to one feeling justified in inflicting pain on others in someway simply for the result of ones feeling superior then that to me is not a good thing. The human creature at its core is brutal and simply and savage. We find reason to be more, to be kind. self sacrificing, loving, to forgo our own interests for a greater cause. our nation, our children, our community due not to reason alone but to a belief in a greater future, a unrealized but hoped for result. Great leaps into the unknown to me come with a measure of faith tempered by reason. That is the beauty of humanity. We are both creatures of faith and reason and finding a middle ground a harmony in that is the best course. Too much faith/religion you have the evils of theocracy, inquisition etc. Too much reason you have Eugenics and the evils of nationalism and similar eminently logical evils.

i will quote isaac asimov:“I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.”

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In my little corner of existence, there is an absolute lack of proof that any god has ever existed. So until that changes there are no gods. The burden of proof doesn't lie with me so again until someone comes up with something tangible there's nothing.

I think I’m in a similar place, philisophically. To my understanding, atheism is simply a rejection of the idea of a god or gods. For most folks, this is also a rejection of religion, as the religion(s) they know are based on belief in gods. Some religions, however, are Philosophically godless in some forms, such as Classical Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Many of us wrestle with the question of whether we reject supernaturalism in any form, including much of what’s called “spirituality.” I can’t say I positively “believe there are no gods,” rather that I am not in any way convinced that such beings exist either through any arguement or through what I observe in the world around me. My world doesn’t need gods, and works just fine without them!

I believe you are angry at yourself for being fooled by religion and even spreading its falsities. You want to undo the damage you have done. But you have to realize that it wasn't your fault to have been indoctrinated. It might really be the case that you live your atheism as a substitute for a religion, because it left a hole inside yourself.
My advice would be to take a step back and look at the situation you're in rationally. What do you want to do with your life? Is spreading atheism a worthwhile goal for yourself? What makes you happy? What makes the people you love happy? Those are the important questions not who is right or wrong or if a god really exists or not.