root@ha3ks:~#
PERSONAL

I'm in a weird headspace rn

This will be a bit of a weird update from me.

I figure it’s imposter syndrome hitting me hard but I also think I might be falling out of love with security.

Don’t get me wrong, security is fun, hacking stuff is fun but theres a lot of things going on at the moment and I guess I am approaching actual burnout rather than all that fake burnout that most people get when they are farming impressions and likes on various platforms.

Where my head is

Normally my ‘deep’ ‘interlectual’ and ‘thought provoking’ posts end up on LinkedIn and in the case of the ‘FUD Fighters’ stuff, they do generally quite well (probaably piss of the snake oil peddlers I call out) but this time I wanted to ‘own’ my words and put them on here.

I kinda worry in the run up to taking the OSCP and getting it done with it’s not going to open as many doors as I hope it could, this is kinda amplified with a recent spat of job interviews and informal breif chats I had which resulted in no furhter action, interestingly I wrote a post on LinkedIn about it entitled “So your skills are more theory than practical.”.

So where does that leave me.

That last part hurts the most.

How does one get experience if you don’t start somewhere? - oh entry level.. no wait they still want and prefer people with existing experience… whats the point?

Other avenues of attention

Recently my Mrs was complaining about an applicaton on her iPhone, since the last update the app has been garbage and won’t work properly.

It’s not an overly complex application, you simply take a photo of an item of clothing and tag it with certain things making it searchable in a database, thats all.. the TL;DR would be ‘it helps her track what clothes she has’.

There are other applications that do exactly the same thing but none of them work in the same way that this particular application does and thats what hurts the most, hell some even won’t work properly unless you buy a subscription or a full cost application.

We got to talking about it and she asked if I could help, If I could build a new application that does that thing in the way she wants it to.

I’ll be honest, for the change of pace my brain has been burning rubber thinking of the ways I can put this app together for her. Not for the app store, not for money, just for her. - also I did software development in University, so full circle here.

I’ve coded very poor apps in the past, mainly android and mainly to run custom scripts like reconfigure networking for my raspberrypi homeserver, control lights etc. Nothing for iPhone though as I couldn’t wrap my head around xcode and all that other faff that many years ago, also I don’t currently own a Mac anymore (her 2011 macbook air wont cut it due to it’s age).

I find myself being pulled in a new and exciting direction. Pivot from security to app dev.

I mean I would not be the first to make a pivot like that and I won’t be the last either.

Now my brain breaks again and the imposter syndrome comes back; was I ever good enough to do the securiity side? will I fail this OSCP attempt as proof? would I be inclined to do a resit exam if I’m not sure it’s for me anymore?

I’ve even been looking into the fun side of SRE, DevOps and DevSecOps.

I guess I could summise; My brain sucks right now.

Maybe this is a situation of ‘I needed to get this off my chest’ or something.

Either way I am making it into a blog post and posting it under personal.

As much as I want my site/blog to be a reflection of my I guess, ‘professional works’, there is a human side that also needs to be shared.

For now, I guess it’s ‘back to the grind’… Exam is soon, so I guess I have that going for me.

I don’t have any sponsors or anything but if you enjoy my work, or feel sympathy for my wife, then I have set up a Ko-Fi account as well as a BuyMeACoffee people can donate to.