Tag: Jobs

Posted in Covid, Hiatus, Informational

The Condensed Version of Why I was MIA

Posted on by Steph

It’s been a while. I kept trying to say that I would be back blogging, but there were so many compounding things.

Covid-19: I wanted to be one of those people who was super productive during Covid not realizing how changes might effect mood. I’m an introvert by nature and it felt like ‘no big deal’….til it was. I ossicilated between being feeling like nothing was changing and I was stuck to making a lot of headway last year. I made all this progress, but felt isolated…it’s not a good headspace to write from.

Changing Jobs: When I first went on radio silence I had just left a position, my first real infosec position and there was a period of like 3 weeks where I technically had a job, but wasn’t working. I did not know how panicky not having a steady income would be (even with savings), but it was….when you’re money is funny you are not in a place to blog.

Contracting is for the Birds: This came later, there was a period where I transitioned from subcontracting to contracting and thay was stressful. There was poor communication and a back and forth on whether I needed to find a new job, so basically I was back to panicking and stressing about what comes next. It worked out, but it also made me realize I didn’t want to stay a contractor for much longer.

2021: I turned a corner in 2021, if anything this was a great year because all I accomplished. I racked up certs, worked and felt in my niche. I mean by the end of 2021 I felt like I had really made a little establishment in my new career. On my team my name was synonymous with great work and I knew it, but I also was burning myself out trying to prove that I belong (burnout is real. Imposter syndrome is real. And I will discuss in a later post). I was moving so much I couldn’t even think about slowing down to commit to blogging.

Now: Here we are.

  • I’ve got an awesome mentor
  • Have been motivated to think about branding (which is exciting)
  • I think about where I want to fit into and give back to the infosec community as a whole
  • I got to do a CTF that made me more secure and what type of infosec path I want to be on (more on this later)

All in all I’m ready to commit to this again, but with caveats. This will only be a weekly blog, the calendar I wanted was too much to busy and hectic. This is manageable and it’s good to set boundaries (even with yourself).

In the coming weeks I will also be changing the look of this blog. Thanks to anyone who still reading this and sorry that I left you in the lurch.

Posted in Uncategorized

Charting a Path (or Not…)

Posted on by Steph

(Late because I took CYSA + Beta on Thursday 1/09) [Fingers-Crossed]

I think people direct people to “find what they love and do it…” They say that as if doing that is just the easiest thing, but sometimes it isn’t. For example the number of things I thought I really wanted to do and then finally realized I wasn’t suited for or I really wasn’t as interested in are too numerous to list here.
I will admit that it is important to find the things that you are most interested in because it makes you want to learn more about it. Although, there is often things that one has to learn in order to move forward or change careers or what have you, it’s also important to kind of focus in one the things that really interest you and learn about them.

Peerlyst

For me, Digital Forensics and Penetration Testing is one of the subsets of Cybersecurity that really interests me. I may have to learn to do SIEM investigations and log analysis for work, but learning these things isn’t a passion project for me, it’s a means to an ends. These things are still interesting , but when I learn them it’s not the same sense of pride or what have you as I feel when I uncover something or even when doing a CTF.

CompTIA

I 100% am not set on what exactly what I will be doing in 5 or 10 years. Because my path has diverged so often and in such varied ways I try not to make solid plans, but rather have an outline of things I would like to learn or do. Whether that would work for others isn’t for me to say. I just know that I tried to rigid planning thing and that didn’t work for me at all. The unplanned plan does work.

SANS

My best advice would be to learn, to be open to learning and always be researching shifts and changes and developments and then just to absorb the things that interest you the most and see where these things might take you.

One Great Site for seeing what careers might be available to research:
https://www.cyberseek.org/pathway.html