My "introduce yourself" post

Hey y'all! I thought take a little time to introduce myself seeing that I'm very new to steemit. Anyway, here goes.

My name is Zane Tompkins, and I'm 23 years old and reside in a small rural farming town in western Kentucky. I was born in bowling green and I grew up here in this small tri-state area. Anyhow, seeing that most of my posts will be martial arts related I thought I'd share my story of how and why I got into martial arts and why I'd like to be a professional fighter. It's pretty simple really, ever since I was a small child there were just a few people that I greatly admired. The first being the men and women who serve our country and protect us day in and day out. The second being wanderlei silva and royce gracie. I still remember the first time I saw a "best of pride" show on satellite tv back when I was probably 14 years old. I was just clicking through random channels when I came across a channel where two men were about to fight. Those men were Wanderlei Silva and Rampage Jackson. Needless to say I was absolutely blown away at how fearless and aggressive Silva was, absolutely decimating Rampage with knees and throwing caution to the wind. That was the moment that I decided MMA was something I had to get into. At the time I was still very short and extremely skinny so When I saw clips of Royce Gracie taking out guys twice his size I envied him, but I also wanted the same skills as him. I thought that maybe if I learned what he knew then I wouldn't have to worry about being bullied for being smaller than everyone else. Witnessing the unbelievable abilities of both those men was the birth of my dream to become a world champion. However, my very first dream as a child was the serve my country, and I intended to become one of the nations elite and become a United States Marine before I pursued any other life dream. January 28th, 2013 I departed for Parris Island, South Carolina, Marine Corps Recruit Depot. 3 months later i walked off the parade deck in my uniform as a U.S. Marine. As mentioned in my first post I found it hard to juggle both dreams at the same time and eventually, after having surgery late in my contract decided to finish my time in uniform strong and out my other dream on hold. Now my time as a Marine is done and I couldn't be happier that I was able to live out my life dream. In 2017 I made the transition and starting out strong in 2018, I'm ready to dedicate myself fully to accomplishing my next life dream and more importantly take others with me!