<h3>Introducing myself to the Steemit Community</h3>

Hi, Thomas here. I'm an American who has lived in various parts of Japan for a long time. I was originally shipped over here by the US Navy back in 1978 at the age of 18. I have been here for most of the time since then, except for 2 years that I and my Japanese wife lived in my home state of Florida, about 35 years ago.

Financially, things weren't going very well for us, at the time, so I managed to get a job in Japan and we left Florida and moved to Japan and have been here ever since, except for a trip to Florida, and other places, every now and then. The last visit to Florida was with my 8 member Japanese based family (Self, Wife, 2 sons, 2 daughter in laws a grandson and a grand daughter) in August of last year (2018).

I love Florida and the USA, but I hate the high health care costs. Its much better here in Japan, though not as good as it used to be. and it probably will become less good in the future. with the huge increase in the aged population, of which I may become a part of in the not so distant future. This is coupled with a large drop in newborns each year.

After coming back to Japan, I worked for a Japanese house, and building, painting company, an American business telephone manufacturing company and a Japanese Trading company. I didn't like any of them and went off on my own nearly 30 years ago, and don't miss that former world at all, and hope to never go back. I could probably write a long story about each of those experiences, and may do so someday. Lots of crazy stuff happened.

I have had so much less stress and have had far fewer human relation problems after leaving the corporate world for good, hopefully, all of those years ago. As for security in the future, I am a bit worried and am always trying to develop various sources of income that can hopefully continue into my old age years.

I enjoy privately teaching English to students of ages from One to Eighty Two (so far) and making money from various online and offline activities. I made my first dollar online back in 1994, exactly 25 years ago.

I had a major problem in the past, of spending too much on shiny objects, which are offers that promise you secret ways to quickly achieve success, but don't usually work out, and often seem to be missing something. I have been doing a fairly good job recently of cutting down on those types of purchases, and concentrating on fewer things.

I had a lot of credit card debt at one time, but finally got that cleaned up several years ago, without going into bankruptcy, and I sure hope to never get into a situation like that again. I was making good money at the time, but was stupidly spending even more. I know that some people have great imaginations, and are able to find ways to make many of these programs work, and I hope to get better at being able to do that.

Between 2010 and 2017, I built up a fairly large list of over 20,000 online subscribers, but in the end I burnt it out, by sending over 800 solo ads ad swaps. The way I was doing it was churning and burning, and that doesn't work well for most people. If you don't know what those are, please ask me any time. I plan to do it all over again and to try building better relationships this time. As for the solo ads and ad swaps, I had 100% positive reviews and no negative ones. So the people I sent for evidently had much better offers than I did, as I didn't get very good result for my own offers at the time. I think most of my subscribers were tire kickers and freebie seekers. I now understand that concentrating on building a good relationship with subscribers is very important.

I love working for myself and not having much, if any, human relations problems. In the old days I had a lot of them and didn't like any of them, at all.

Currently, my main, close, friends are my immediate family members and a couple other people. I love playing tennis and going to the gym, both of which I do a number of times every week. At both of those places I have some people that I consider friends, but we never meet outside of those areas.

With the tennis group and the gym, I feel like I am killing a number of birds with one stone, as I am also able to practice my Japanese languages skill, while also getting rare referrals (actually none yet, but I am hoping for it to happen some day) and having fun and getting exercise, which I really need.

Another thing about me is that I weighed 353 pounds 5 or 6 years ago and I am now down to around 200. I hope to get down to around 170 in the next few years. I'm thinking about starting a business around this area alone, giving advice on how to lose weight and keep it off, and have a healthier and happier life. Getting started and taking action is so important. I know this and need to actually do it more and more in every area of my life. The picture below, on the left was more than 5 or 6 years ago, but I stayed about that size for a long time unfortunately. I have made a number of rebounds in the past, but the last few years they have been very slight, and quickly corrected, rebounds.

One easy tip, if you have a weight problem like I did, is to walk quite a bit every day. You should buy a device that tracks your steps. I once used one that I clipped to my belt and now I use an app on my cheap smart phone. I have walked at least 12,000 steps every day for the last 5 years. I miss by a bit sometimes, but always make it up in the next day or so. Yesterday I walked 25,000 steps, which included 5 hours of no break tennis, half practice and half matches, which I mostly lost. I'm a pretty bad player, but I am slowly, but surely, getting better.

I'm also working on my second bachelor's degree, this one in business administration, and I have 8 courses to go, three of which I am taking this term, starting Friday of this week. I have never actually passed 3 courses in one term, and hope to do so this term and next term as well. Then there will be just two courses to pass in the final term.

I recently heard about Steemit from Mark Bishop, in his course "Contenu". I look forward to posting some quality content on this site, to reading quality content from many of you here and to communicating with all of you in this community as well.