I went the other way: I started by outright refusing to label or identify myself politically and picking opinions a la carte, and over time most of my opinions

I went the other way: I started by outright refusing to label or identify myself politically and picking opinions a la carte, and over time most of my opinions on the things I care most about tended to converge on one political ideology, so I've started to generally identify with that ideology as a result. There's notable exceptions, which I do keep in mind, but they tend to be just exceptions. (Of course, even then it's not simple. There's also party infighting, subparties, etc, so even if my opinion on "what the issue is" lines up, my opinion on "what the solution is" might not.) Edit: another complication is strength of conviction. For example, standard American left/right dichotomy comes with very strong conviction about guns. I have very very weak conviction about guns. Even though I tend to agree with my ideologies' opinion on what should be done about gun control, I don't really care that much either way whether there's no gun control or super strict gun control. So while I do "identify" as my ideology here, there's clearly a disconnect from the mainstream form of it.