There are dozens of us! And you can join us at !gentoo@lemm.ee if you haven't yet!
I love it because it's super configurable, lets you choose compiler optimizations (and through USE flags, features that you need in your packages - you don't have to include everything).
My Linux knowledge has skyrocketed compared to before I used Gentoo. Which of course means it's NOT the distro for people who want something that just works, but honestly, now that it's working properly, I feel it's actually pretty hard to break, and when it does break, I know how to fix it! Versus with Linux Mint a decade ago, if I broke it, I had no idea where to get started and just reinstalled it.
Of course, about half a year ago I decided to move from x11 and OpenRC to Wayland and systemd. And I use KDE. And have Nvidia graphics. Soooo it was a fun ride both relearning how my init system works, and also running into problems with Steam, etc.
I also try to keep my kernel in single digit megabytes, but occasionally I find something missing and have to recompile with more "bloat". So right now I believe it's around 11 MB, but I'll see about improving it over my next vacation. Not that 11 MB takes long to load off a gen4 NVMe drive, but the ePeen needs to be stroked! Also no initial ramdisk, to save even more boot time.