Ask away! iirc, we have a few professional chefs around here. Personally, I love kitchen gadgets & good hardware. I really only dived into cooking about ten years ago & have been building up my inventory ever since. Over time, the quantity of items I own have pared down quite a bit as I've found out what works & what is junk. Some things have been huge consolidation tools, like the Instant Pot, which can do so many things in one box. What I've learned is that you don't need an awful lot of equipment, you just need the right tools. I could easily live in an RV with what I've cut my kitchen tool inventory down to (actually, that would probably be a size upgrade from my current kitchen, lol).
If you're serious about it, then refrigerated, cold-pressed, unrefined, organic flaxseed oil is the way to go:
http://sherylcanter.com/wordpress/2010/01/a-science-based-technique-for-seasoning-cast-iron/
Again, if you're really serious about cast-iron cooking, that's the best method I've come across. That's a minimum of an 18-hour process (and the oil isn't cheap!), so it depends on how good of a coating you want. I've used a variety of methods & am still trying stuff out, so I don't have a definitive answer myself yet. I recently tried my buddy's trick with fairly good results...coat in shortening (Crisco) & bake once in the oven, haha.
But yeah, cast iron gear is pretty awesome. You can get a solid 10" Lodge skillet for under $20 these days if you look around. It's one of those "buy it for life" things. Doesn't matter how bad you wreck the pan, you can always resurrect it with a little TLC. I use mine for searing sous vide projects on a weekly basis at minimum, and lately I've been doing a lot of baking with it (stuff like skillet cookie pies, which are to die for). For me, getting into cooking was exactly like getting bit by the computer bug...once you get past the "I can't cook & don't know how" idea (same with computers) & start figuring stuff out, it really changes the game & changes how you look at food & cooking, because it becomes a process of researching online on sites like Pinterest, trying recipes out, figuring out what you personally like, mastering new tools, etc. Not much different than modding a computer & overclocking a processor...you kind of get sucked into the process & have fun with it. And there are more recipes on the planet than there are meals left to eat before you depart this realm, so it's not like you'll ever get bored with it. I kind of feel like I've hit a plateau with building computers & stuff because the power has kind of caught up & stabilized in the desktop world, whereas there's always something new to try with cooking!