I don't know how long ago "your early 30's" was, but for me this was never a question - I'm a die-hard vimmer, I use vim bindings everywhere. It's practical, why force myself to relearn my typing with every new tool I use if I really don't have to? Emacs, as it turns out, vims much better than any other concrete vim implementation. Even though I did learn some basic Emacs vanilla bindings, I'm still a vimmer. Vimming in Emacs never was a big obstacle for me.