The end of 2020 really lit a fire in my IT/infosec journey. I started PentesterLab's PRO content. I did TryHackMe's Advent of Cyber 2020, something I started thinking the day would come when I would be faced with a task I couldn't complete, only to come out of the other end with all content completed the day it released and a sizable activity streak on the platform. Needless to say, that was a great boost to my confidence. I know that I don't know everything and I still have so far to go, but now I know that whatever problem I face, I can get through it.
Then the new year happened.
Here in Japan, the New Year is a big deal. It's when families and relatives all get together, share what they've been up to over the past year, talk, drink, the works. As I had just married into this family in the summer, I had to do a lot of the meeting and the greeting and basically a lot of not-the-pattern-I-had-established-for-myself-over-the-past-month. Being on the spectrum, that meant that I would find myself in the position I am now. Focus gone. Structure in shambles. I struggle to do what came naturally before.
But being autistic isn't an excuse. Just means I work differently. I'd need to find a way back into the pattern and structure that was working so well for me before. Part of that solution is moving to a separate place with the wife where I can focus uninterrupted. Another part, I have Twitter mutual @WearyAndroid to thank for indirectly spurring me to do.
I'm talking about the #100DaysOfHacking challenge. What it is, is 100 consecutive days of hacking activities, be it studying on platforms like TryHackMe or HackTheBox, doing CTFs, reading write ups and about new vulns and CVEs, watching videos on YouTube by people like ippsec or The Cyber Mentor, pretty much anything hacking related with the goal being to consistently improve yourself a bit every day to build a habit of learning and improving and being better than you were the day before. When I saw their Twitter post about it, I realized that could be just what I needed to get myself back in the space I needed to be in mentally to continue this journey.
Truth be told, I started yesterday and posted on Twitter about it. But today I realized, why stop there? If I'm documenting what I'm doing already, why not blog about it? Isn't that what blogs are for? And while I can't post my PTLab PRO content writeups here, I can certainly post writeups for THM and HTB. Since I have no CS/IT degree or field-related work experience, this can be the showcase of what I know to eventually get me a job in a field I've come to love.
From now on, I'll continue posting daily progress updates on Twitter, but when I finish a THM room or pwn a HTB box, I'll put the write-up here. After all, recruiters and companies can't know what I'm capable of if I don't talk about it.
That's all for now, see you in the next bit~
#ethical-hacking #hacking #productivity #TryHackMe #HackTheBox #2021