Welcome! I’m a newcomer too.
First, as regards sleep paralysis, I think the most important thing is not to be scared of it. I’ve had sleep paralysis briefly about 3-4 times and haven’t had any trouble with it. Keep in mind too that anything scary you may experience is in your head and with proper confidence you can overcome it. Check this out all the same!
Sleep paralysis is often associated with the WILD technique for lucid dreaming, which basically requires you to have it at some point. I’m not trying WILD as I, like you, would rather avoid SP (although I’m not hugely bothered by it) and it’s quite a challenging method.
As a beginner, I think it’s important to work on dream recall and get plenty of dreams written down. With that you can look for recurring dream signs (indicators that you’re dreaming which you get a lot in your dreams). For example, my dream signs include seeing people I used to talk to a lot at school.
In addition, keep doing reality checks and ensure you are consistently questioning your environment in waking life. How did you get where you are now? Is there something odd that you can’t immediately explain?
If you’d like to try a technique, maybe go for the MILD method combined with WBTB if you can? These shouldn’t involve any sleep paralysis, although I suppose it can happen occasionally. I’m no expert of course though as I haven’t had a lucid dream; I’m just summarising key points from a lot of stuff I’ve read.
Best of luck!