Confusion of converting

I was born Jewish. By saying this I mean that I was born having parents that practice the Jewish faith. Because of this I was raised to believe in God, follow certain rules and participate in several different festivals. My parents never told me God existed but it was pretty much implied by the way they encouraged me to go to the synagogue to pray and say all types of blessings before Friday night dinner and lighting candles. Even my name is Jewish so lets face it, there was no way I could grow up without considering myself Jewish. As I grew up it was simply just a given thing. I was Jewish and therefore should believe certain things and behave a certain way.
Lately my thought process has changed though. Not because I don't like some of the Jewish traditions but because I (after a very long time) stepped out of my comfort zone and religion wasn't a thing handed to me anymore. I got the freedom to explore how I really feel about religion and what I've learnt is that there are some aspects that I really don't agree with. I've come to discover how close minded many religious people are and as a person who constantly want to learn new things and develop as a person, being close-minded simply doesn't do it for me. I'm not saying all religious people are close-minded because I've met many people like me on my journey but we often tend to stick to what we've been taught as children instead of actually forming our own opinion. Because of this we don't always think outside the box and understand how other people think.
The issue isn't that I don't believe in God (which I'm still undecided about) but that I feel that being religious puts a lot of pressure and expectations on me instead of me choosing to do these things because I like it. Instead of religion giving me some sort of strength as it should do I often see it as a burden and some sort of responsibility to pass the traditions on. That is why I don't understand people that choose to convert to a religion.
I understand that there is a part of religion that seems enticing such as feeling a sense of belonging or having some kind of guidelines in life of what is right or wrong. However, I strongly believe that you can have these things without having the pressure from a religion. We are constantly told what right and wrong is in the society and if I was the one deciding I wouldn't always trust religion's opinion on right and wrong since it very often is a slight skewed picture of it.
If you haven't grown up with a religion you might feel that converting will make you fit in to a group but in my opinion I don't think that is the case. Since you haven't grown up with these traditions and knowing everyone in the community you are very likely to feel misplaced in the early stages of your conversion. I can't say I know how it feels like but I can relate since I recently moved to a new city and a new community where I completely feel like an outsider even though I speak the same language and grew up with very similar traditions.
So what should you do in my opinion then? Well, in my opinion you don't have to belong to a religion to believe in God. You don't even have to pray to God to believe in God and if you feel like you want to pray then you don't need other people around you to do that. If there are good things in a religion that you like there is nothing that says that you can't adapt these things to your life.
One of the things that struck me reading about people choosing to convert was that the people saw a deeper meaning in life instead of living a shallow lifestyle. I can see how religion might give you this feeling but if you can find a deeper meaning in life by finding God you haven't actually found a deeper meaning. You've just found something to tell you how to live your life that prevents you from living your shallow lifestyle.
In our society we already have guidelines how to behave and there are lots of groups out there for people to find a connection to. Religion won't solve any problems and I personally don't understand why anyone would want to put these restrictions to their life. If you don't like bacon, then don't eat bacon. You don't have to become Jewish to stop. If you want an arranged marriage, go on a dating site or ask a friend to set you up.
Religion is something most of us are born with, many of us see it as a burden, some see it as a blessing and some people think like me, it's simply something I was born with and I have to make the best of it.

This article is the reason for me writing this post. You might find it interesting.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2223866/Islam-real-love-just-lust-The-party-girl-whos-embraced-new-life-Muslim-convert.html