Hello readers, I hope you are well and this blog post finds you all in good health and excellent spirits.. Well enough about you, this is my blog after all so on to me.. 🙂

The last few months have been challenging, my initial high of InfoSec learning and drive has seemed to dropped and instead I’ve been left with a sense of emptiness in terms of what and where to go next. If you remember I started this journey nearly 2 years ago with the sole purpose of doing more “security stuff” and overall I have to say I’ve achieved my goal. He’s a quick recap of what I’ve done (yeah I know I’m blowing my own trumpet but lets face it, if you could, you would).

• OSCP – Done
• OSWP – Done
• Malware course – Done
• SANS course – Done
• Wrote some cool code (well I think it’s cool) – Done
• Wrote the “Very Unofficial Dummies Guide to Scapy” – Done
• Met some really cool people and even got to see a bit more of the world out of it – Done

So where to go from here?? A few people who I have a great deal of respect and time for suggested that instead of my scatter gun approach to learning I focus more on one or two areas, which to be fair makes perfect sense. The problem is on what, I needed to understand my “bliss”, the thing that you love the most and are passionate about. You know that thing that can consume hours of your time without you even realising (no not Christmas shopping).

It’s taken me weeks to work out what my “bliss” is, and in the end it turned out to be quite simple. Throughout my career I’ve built things, designed things, devised solutions to problems that other people have struggled with. One of my greatest assets is my imagination, my desire to learn new things and to push the boundaries of “the norm”. It’s what I enjoy, it’s my bliss.

So what does this mean, I hear you ask. Well throughout 2014 I’m going to take the 16 years infrastructure knowledge I have and the 2 years of InfoSec skills I’ve developed to build things. I have no idea what yet but with my new (and oddly strange) love for coding it’s more likely to be taking an idea that randomly pops into my head (very random at times) and turning it into something, always with a security twist. I want to see what focusing on creating things can lead to. I’ve already experienced it with my sniffMyPackets work, and I want to see what else I can do.

For me, that’s the true meaning of “hacker”, not these Hollywood hackers that take down systems with a single keystroke but someone who builds something, that can take an idea and make something out of it (whether it’s a bad idea or not), or takes an idea from someone else (giving full credit to the original creator) and tweaking it for new and interesting mischief.

I already have a few ideas locked away in the attic that is my brain and it’s time to dust off my IDE and start making things go boom (not really boom if you are reading this Mr NSA).

So if I don’t get a chance before, I wish you all a very merry Christmas/New Year etc etc. and may you all find your bliss in 2014.