Welcome! What an awesome "introduce yourself" post! Life really is only worth living if you're doing what you love; otherwise, I guess you're really not living at all ;) Good for you to take the plunge and do what you love!

I joined steemit in mid-December and am enjoying it, although there has been a steep learning curve for sure! I belong to several groups here who welcome, support, and mentor new people like yourself. They each have a Discord channel as well, which if you don't know, is another place that we connect, chat, share ideas, contest, problems, share your posts ...whatever you need actually. The groups are Hive account@newbieresteemday, Hive account@asapers and Hive account@greetersguild. We overalap a bit, but that's a good thing because you can get to know so many like-minded people who are really interested in selfless, community spirit. We purposefully go looking for new people to connect with, because truthfully, it can all get a little overwhelming in the beginning, and I've found it's best to really try and make some good connections and develop a genuine community here.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I'm also going to come back here as Hive account@newbieresteemday and resteem your post to give it more exposure :)

Here are the Discord links for each group too! I hope you come and join us there ;)

Discord channel invite for Hive account@newbieresteemday
Discord channel invite for Hive account@asapers
Discord channel invite for Hive account@greetersguild

You will find them all to be very welcoming! They each have a "start here" channel that will get you going. Please let me know if you get stuck!

Again, welcome to steemit ;)