Hello. My name doesn’t matter much here. I go by an old nickname — Me-me. I’m 67 years old, born and still living in Japan.
For more than 40 years, I worked on a factory floor — not in quality control, not in management, just on the line. Bending metal. Watching machines. Coming home tired. I retired a few years ago, and after a while of doing nothing in particular, I started writing.
Why this site exists
This site is called Still Choosing. The name came from a feeling I couldn’t shake: even at 67, life keeps asking me to decide. Whether to keep the insurance or cancel it. Whether to fix the old roof or let it go. Whether to forgive an old friend, or hold the grudge a little longer. None of these choices are dramatic. None of them will be in a movie. But they are real, and they are mine.
So that’s what I write about. Small choices. Honest second-guessing. The strange weather of being older.
Why English?
I already run two Japanese blogs. They’re read by a few kind people, and I’m grateful for that. But I keep thinking — if I write only in Japanese, my words stay in one small room.
English isn’t my language. I learned it from textbooks, from songs, from George Harrison records I’ve played since I was twenty. (That’s where the name “Still Choosing” comes from, in a way — from a line in his song While My Guitar Gently Weeps: “still my guitar gently weeps.”) My English is plain. It is sometimes wrong. But it might travel further than my Japanese ever could.
Maybe someone in Manila reads this. Maybe someone in Detroit. Maybe a son or daughter shows it to their father, who’s also in his sixties, who’s also figuring out what to do next. That would be enough.
What I write about
- Money decisions in your 60s — insurance, savings, what to spend on
- Health — teeth, knees, the body slowing down
- Family — adult children, aging parents, what’s left to say
- Small daily choices that look small but aren’t
- Looking back without flinching
What this site is not
- It is not advice. I’m not a doctor or a financial planner.
- It is not a sob story. I’m fine. Most days, anyway.
- It is not a self-help book. I haven’t fixed anything.
It’s just one factory man in his 60s, still choosing, and writing it down.
A note on honesty
I have one rule I try not to break: I don’t lie. If something on this site is from my own life, I lived it. If it’s from research, I’ll say I researched it. I won’t pretend a story is mine when it isn’t.
Thank you for reading. If you want to say something — anything — the contact page is there.
— Me-me