Tales of a 30 Year-Old Cybernaut

Intro:

10 years.

This month marks a decade since I've been in IT. I thought I'd share my experience between starting out as a student employee for my K-12 school to a cloud security architect for a global consulting and service provider.

I'd also like to share my personal background and hobbies to keep it more casual and real than too formal (and how some of it comes full circle later on if you're interested enough to read). If you want to jump straight into the career part, skip to the header titled, Help Desk (Age 18/19, No pay).

TLDR: I wrote this post to elaborate on my own personal and professional experience and self-discovery; my decade-long and counting journey in IT / Security, what drew me into infosec, lessons learned, and how I'm bettering myself as a person and professional within the community.

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Bio / What Got Me Into InfoSec:

'90s kid, born and raised by divorced parents in Middle America surrounded by farmland and ditches that stretch for 50 miles in every direction until the nearest city / town. When I was a kid, my passion was video games and music, more specifically, metal. Both of these were my escape from the angry, frustrating childhood I experienced rooted from my parents' divorce. They still are my passions, but as a kid, I lived, breathed, and bled video games.

In my youth, it was Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Tekken, Resident Evil, and Metal Gear Solid on the PS1, and Commandos on the PC. Youth to teenager, it was Max Payne, Hitman, Splinter Cell, Grand Theft Auto, Manhunt, The Warriors, Call of Duty, professional wrestling games, the list goes on, on the PS2.

I was very indecisive on what I wanted to do when I grew up. In middle school, I thought survival teacher. In junior high, I thought American military history teacher. In high school, I thought psychology. In college, I thought military. During the first 1.5 years in college, I changed my major probably 5 times on paper and 8 times in my head.

Over the years, I've learned two things:

1.) Call me crazy, but I believe I enjoyed these video games because there are many threat modeling aspects to them all, especially on the offensive side like Hitman, Splinter Cell, and Metal Gear Solid. You have objectives, you assess the situation you're given, and you have to figure out how to bypass / eliminate these threats in your way.

2.) Many, many, many people in infosec come from all backgrounds. Business, law, medicine, literature, music, zoology, etc. Just because a person didn't get a degree in business / tech / cyber doesn't mean they don't know anything about IT / cyber. Experience is what matters, and everyone needs to start somewhere. After all, the education system is broken and doesn't prep anyone for the real world.

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10-Year Career Path:

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Help Desk @ K-12 School (Age 18-19, No pay):

I was 18-19 when I started out in help desk. It was an elective in high school that was practically a study hall. Myself and another kid were in the Director of Technology's office. We would help him if he needed a hand with something or answer the phone, troubleshoot, etc. for staff when he was away, which was often. He did everything from helping Betty plug her VGA cable into her monitor so her "computer was no longer black" anymore to the entire IT budget for the K-12 school system. It was mainly assisting with answering the phone, troubleshooting a smart board, set up MacBooks and iPad racks for the elementary and middle school, and run wire for surveillance cameras.

Lessons Learned:

None. I was too stupid at this age. All I cared about in my late teenage years were girls, my car, and my drum set. I had an '88 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme.

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Asset Protection @ Grocery Store (Age 20, $11/hr):

My primary job during my high school and early college days was working at a grocery store. My grocery store was looking for an asset protection / loss prevention associate. Semi-jokingly, I applied, got 2 interviews, and was accepted. I say "semi-jokingly" because I truly never understood what that job was. All I knew was I got to walk around dressed normally without having a supervisor on my ass, or so it seemed. I was 20 and way too stupid to realize what I was diving into.

Asset protection / loss prevention is essentially physical security; monitor, detect, and prevent financial loss via fraud and theft from both employees (internal) and customers (external). For this role, there were mandatory classes that were held for a week or two about laws, store policies, self-defense, etc.; essentially a watered down criminal justice course.

There was so much thrown at me within the 6 months I had that role. I experienced coworkers bend the rules and attempt to apprehend thieves aggressively, chasing them in the parking lot, ripping their handbag off their shoulders with stolen merchandise in it, calling 911 multiple times a day to report theft, burning CDs with surveillance footage for local police and evidence for ongoing investigations, getting yelled at by meth head customers, investigating an incident on Thanksgiving Night where a traveling construction contractor lost his wallet at the store's gas station, which ended up being stolen by one of the employees who later quit, accidentally setting the fire alarm in the store off, quickly running to a fire in the deli department (different day) ensuring everyone was safe (they were), etc.

In my small, farm town, I caught one person - an old lady stealing cat food and other misc. items off the shelf who was caught doing it elsewhere in the region in the past. It was ~ $40 worth of items, and apparently enough for the cop that I called to arrest her right then and there in the security office, and I had to escort the cop with her in cuffs out to his patrol car.

It was a role I never anticipated being in, especially at an age where I couldn't even legally drink alcohol yet, but I learned a lot from it. Part of me was proud that I caught my first and only person because the on-the-job (OTJ) training quota was apprehending like 10 people within the first 6 months, which is what ultimately led to me switching departments versus just being released. But in hindsight, I really felt bad for the lady. No one knows what her life circumstances were, what issues she was battling, etc. But it was my job. Due to my "poor results" per the OJT quota, I switched departments before applying and getting accepted for a student employee position in the IT department at the college I was attending. My friend was already an employee there, and he helped me with the employment opportunity.

Lessons Learned:

Adaptation. Mentally, this job was a learning curve and noticeable pivot for me in my work ethic, attitude, hunger for knowledge, general curiosity, and tenacity. There was so much thrown at me, my brain couldn't wrap around all of it. It was a mental shift where I gained fuel for tenacity and adapted to the mentality, 'I don't care what I have to do to get the job done, so long as I know what I'm doing'. I'm glad I experienced it, but don't miss it whatsoever. I liked the idea of potentially having a career in safety, so much so that I ended up having a phone interview with a safety manager who worked at the state level just asking about his career, why he likes it, what his path was, etc. But for this role? $11/hr wasn't enough for me to potentially get my ass beat or shot by an unhinged person on a random Tuesday.

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Help Desk / Desktop Support @ College / University: (Age 20-22, Min. wage):

Despite moving to another help desk role, I still didn't know what career I wanted. This was one of the best jobs I've ever had. I was part of a fantastic small team of network / sysadmins who really threw us into the frying pan with hands-on experience, which will always be the best way to learn. It builds self-discovery and soft skills.

I didn't know what a T-568B or what an RJ-45 plug was. I patched my first cable, redid the entire cable management and desktop / workstation setups in classrooms and conference rooms, ran wire through the ceilings, set up IP cameras, troubleshot with users via controlling their screen through System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM), now known as Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager, printers, degaussing hard drives, physically destroying them, re-imaged devices, etc.

When I got my Associate's, I transferred to a university to pursue for my bachelor's. But before I transferred, I learned that the college's Chief Technology Officer (CTO) was an information security guru. Didn't know anything about information security, but the terminology fascinated me.

Access control, risk management, firewall, vulnerability management, etc.

For some reason, I thought Security was all coding. I was absolutely 100% clueless, and was evidently unaware I had already done Security (the asset protection role).

Before I continued my post-secondary journey at the university, I found the Desktop Support Manager of the university's email, sent him an email directly with my résumé, and asked if he offered / needed student employees to help. He replied a week or so later asking for an interview, which I got and was accepted immediately, essentially doing the same thing but on a much larger scale. Instead of 5 IT people, there were around 200, all scattered within different departments, i.e. Helpdesk, Desktop Support, Security, Enterprise Applications, Database, college / building support, etc.

Told my new manager about my interest in Security, in which he put word out for me to the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) of the university for a potential internship opportunity. I had an interview with him a few weeks later on Friday, October 21st, 2016 at 10am in his office. He was happy to move me into Security starting Monday.

Right place, right time.

Lessons Learned:

Google. Oh my God, people, GOOGLE IT. This is one of, if not, THEE most universal example everyone should understand. One of the questions the director and sysadmins asked me in my job interview was, "What do you do when you don't know the answer to something?" My response was, "Ask someone else." "What if no one else is available?" "...Google?" "Yep. Correct." Even if someone was nearby and you knew they have the answer, still attempt to find out yourself. Resist relying on others. Obviously not all the time since it's not always possible, but prohibit yourself from always having someone fetch information for you when you can simply Google the answer or try accessing what you have access to, to find what you're looking for first before relying on others.

Under promise, over deliver. Tell a customer you can fix their issue in 5 days and it takes you 5 hours, you're a hero. Tell a customer you can fix their issue in 5 hours and it takes you 5 days, you provided a bad service, even if the end result was exactly what they wanted. Bottom line is you promised 5 hours, and it took you 5 days. Word on bad experiences aka reputation gets around quicker than good experiences. Think before you say. Soft skill 101.

Orange-white, orange, green-white, blue, blue-white, green, brown-white, brown. Networking 101.

I truly believe if you want to work in IT, whether it's Security or not, Helpdesk is the absolute most best place to start. You learn the basics, you learn the people skills and soft skills, which can take your career to an incredible distance.

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Security Intern @ University (Age 22-24, Min. wage):

During the interview with the CISO, he asked me what made me interested in security. I responded exactly what I said above. "Honestly, I don't know anything about it, but the terminology fascinates me." He took that as a positive in that I was simply curious.

The CISO was also a lawyer, which was another shift in my curiosity. It made me wonder, "Why is a lawyer working in cybersecurity? I thought you went to law school to work at a law firm or self-practice." I thought it was a stupid question, so I kept it to myself, but answered it on my own the next ~ 2-3 months of being there - HIPAA, SOX, GDPR, etc. Where, how, and why the law intertwines with technology alone was / is still super fascinating enough for me to say, "This is definitely what I want my career to be."

Helpdesk / Desktop Support and Security are apples and oranges in terms of permissions and rights. As a result, I didn't have anything to do at least 80% of the time I was employed there, but did the grunt work, i.e. Excel, setting up devices in the "lab", deploying hardware to a separate campus, etc. The crew was awesome in that they were no nonsense, sarcastic people, annoyed with end users, and were passionate about what they did. I fit right in with these guys.

I would do a couple tasks and be done for the day unless they needed me to do some grunt work in Excel. Those tasks were to enter tickets for what we called the "Top 10". The Top 10 were the top ten devices that had the highest risk score passed a certain threshold that day. I would enter a ticket to order the asset owner(s) to remediate the vulnerabilities on the device.

I would also handle copyright infringement. We would get an email from a production studio company like Paramount Pictures, telling us someone on our network with X IP address on Y date / time was illegally downloading / streaming content they didn't pay for. Via Splunk queries, I was able to map the identity of the details of that user given in the email, document what they watched, when they watched it, on what device they watched it on, etc., and submit the form to the Office of Student Conduct & Community Standards (OSC&CS). Essentially, it was a slap on the wrist to them more than anything, but damn, did that power feel good for Lil 22 year-old me.

Through my colleagues outside of work and school, I was starting to attend the following local security conferences - Information Systems Security Association (ISSA), Information Systems & Audit Control Association (ISACA), and InfraGard. ISSA is generally everything security. ISACA is mainly geared towards auditing and security. InfraGard is an organization partnered with the FBI mainly focused on U.S. critical infrastructure.

Then came 2017; one of the worst documented years in cyber history, mainly due to WannaCry. Quantitatively speaking, we didn't get hit hard. Qualitatively, we got hit so hard, it was only worse than the Equifax breach because human safety was at risk. All because of a ransomware attack. Luckily no one actually died, but holy shit, what madness this field can be. That was my one and only shit-hit-the-fan moment in this field where it was a true positive, and luckily I was only an intern, so I didn't have any accountability / stress of rem, but I got a taste of the real cyber world with the best seats in the house; front-row, center.

One of the architects retired from the university to go work elsewhere as an analyst. That company was offering an IT internship. Through his word and my application, I got an interview and was accepted.

Lessons Learned:

Networking. If your colleagues have positive things to say about a specific person whether it's work ethic, great character, both, etc., get to know them. You could not only learn from them, but chatting with them can build yourself a connection.

This business changes every 2 minutes. It really is cyber police. Most of the time, the work can be boring until the short-lived adrenaline rush from a potential incident kicks in. Even now, every week I see a company that was hacked or a global tech giant that was fined for violating laws.

Cover Your Ass (CYA). Document. Everything. Seriously.

For the love of God, don't use Windows XP devices for crucial operations, i.e. providing gas to hospital patients who literally rely on those to live.

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IT Internship @ Agriculture Company (Age 24, $18/hr):

I had two roles with this job. I was originally put in with project management to handle metrics and status updates on SAP tickets and defects. This was the worst role I ever had. Not only did the 50, 60-year old PM want me understand her god awful paralysis-by-analysis Excel spreadsheet, but I never understood nor learned a thing, and she wanted me to contact everyone physically (not via Skype chat) who needed to provide updates so she can update her slide deck.

I was already a disgruntled dude who doesn't want to be bothered and who knows what it's like when a random stranger, especially an intern, approaches you with a clipboard, nagging at you for input. She wanted me to do this every Monday, and I ignored the physical approach. I would message them on Skype, so I'm not bothering them and that they don't feel micromanaged. Plus, I didn't want to be known as "that guy".

She disagreed with me and was upset that I didn't physically approach with them, and the task eventually was handled by the other intern who was hired; who, by the way, kept talking about how he missed his ex-girlfriend so much and that he wanted to show up at her house with roses wearing a tuxedo begging for her back. I'm sitting there in there in my head like, "Dude. I have to test the configuration and utilization of this software. Can I go back to testing while listening to the OST of Hitman: Contracts?"

So I asked for other work around the office and ended up assisting with the identity & access management (IAM) and governance, risk, & compliance (GRC) teams. It was a little bit of Security and a little bit of internal audit. They were in the midst of migrating to ServiceNow, to which I was selected to perform some security and software assessment and testing on. That was okay, but it definitely beat being the lame PM henchman.

I was finishing the last course for my Bachelor's that season and was hunting for my first full-time job. I was accepted for a position as a Support Specialist at a small bank in my hometown, which so happened to be the first IT role in that town for probably several years.

Lessons Learned:

More networking. This was only a summer internship, so I wasn't here long. But in my short time of being here, I met A LOT of people; most of which I met just by scheduling 1:1 meetings with to learn about their background and how they got to where they were. That's a potential hack for interns: If you want to network, but just don't know where to start, try scheduling 1-on-1 meetings with individuals you're interested in learning about. You learn a lot about their personal and professional background, depending how open you are. It builds connections, potential friendships, and overall networking. Someday, that person you met through a simple 1:1 meeting could get you in at another job.

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IT Support @ Small Bank (Age 24, $41k/yr):

Part of me wants to backtrack and say this was the worst job I had, but I actually learned from this job. Mainly what not to do. I was provided the opposite of my lessons learned from the help desk days. I was over-promised and under-delivered and unappreciated. I was promised free training during the interview, but it was never brought up again after that day. I was promised to learn more networking / communication aspects, but was never offered a task. I sat there for 2 months doing nothing.

Everyone who worked there was nice personally, but their work ethic sucked. One guy had been there since the late 70s and was disgruntled and tired, and said, "I hate this place" every day. And he was my favorite of the bunch. The late 50s / early 60-year old I shared an office with kept falling asleep on the job and was on his phone constantly. This guy was also the father of my high school prom date (lol). The one and only helpdesk admin would walk to work from his house and immediately FaceTime with his wife and kids when he sat in his cubicle behind me. My direct supervisor lived an hour away and wouldn't come in until 10-10:30, be on the phone all day bullshitting with people (rarely anything work related) and would be on the toilet somewhere between 3:30 and 4, and be there past 5. This was also the guy who had hired me, promised me training, and didn't teach me anything because he wanted to be the "hero" to come in and save the day and not pass any knowledge to me. Without a shadow of a doubt, the worst boss I ever had.

I did get permission from him to start building and developing security policies, guidelines, standards, baselines, etc. That was fun, but it was all for nothing when I found out that none of them were even reviewed and completely fell off the radar. I think he just had me literally do something to make myself seem useful. Yet, I'm his employee, so I should be his shadow, but guess not.

I also provided new Dell workstations to users and developed an entire re-imaging / validation process from acquiring the old device and providing them with the new. I came in at 5am during the week for a couple weeks and sometimes on Sunday mornings to catch up where I left off. It was a big ask, and I wanted to prove myself. My direct supervisor didn't care at all, and all the Chief Information Officer (CIO) said was, "Good" and walked away. It was right there that I knew I was worth way more than this.

The CIO, who was also the Chief Operations Officer (COO), once engaged me and said their helpdesk admin cannot be trusted. The CIO and helpdesk administrator have nearly come fisticuffs and on more than just one occasion during the 6 months I was there. And that wasn't even the worst part about this role.

Christmas Eve was my very last day. My supervisor asked if I stay at the office until he was there. He didn't get there until 2-3pm. He cornered me and asked me for my password. He claimed that he needed my credentials so that he can use my account to have full control on other users' access from when I went about creating images for people's devices. I wasn't entirely understanding how that was possible and given that it was my last day, I caved in pretty easily and wrote it down for him.

Immediately, hindsight kicked in, and I was pretty pissed at myself. To this day, I still look back on that and wonder why the hell I didn't bother laughing at his face and ignored him. But I had nothing against the people there personally, I just knew I'd never go back there even if they offered me $250k/yr.

The last thing I did was deploy more Dell devices by driving a van full of equipment 2.5 hours away to their mortgage / loan branch and set up workstations there, which was a multi-day process. It was nice to stay at a random hotel and get out of that hellhole for a short period of time.

I knew a guy who I used to work with who had an executive role for a business services company. He had passed my résumé onto HR, and I eventually was reached out to, got an interview, and accepted for a consulting role in Security.

Funny enough, when I told the bank's CIO I was quitting to go work for a consulting company elsewhere that's paying me $17k more for work I actually want to do, he was unsupportive of my decision and said, "It will chew me up and spit me out" and that he could've "easily" seen me being the CISO of that bank.

So consulting will chew me up and spit me out, yet I can easily be envisioned as a CISO. As someone who hadn't been a consultant yet nor a CISO, I was baffled by this statement, but essentially said it's my own decision, and I'll take my chances.

Lessons Learned:

What not to do. There was the bad, and there was the ugly. Notice I didn't mention good because, well...there wasn't any.

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Security Analyst to Cloud Security Architect @ Global Consulting & Service Provider (Age 24 - Present; $58k/yr - $118k/yr 4.5 years later):

I wouldn't say this was a new life chapter, but a new whole book. This was the real deal. A full-time role in a city, 2+ hours away from home, finally living on my own for the first time in my life. These were the bachelor years. I feel I owed the guy who put word in for me for this new role and growth opportunity. If it weren't for him, I wouldn't have this. I got a mediocre apartment in a central spot located within city limits, with everything from the home office, to groceries, to downtown, to the airport, all within 20 minutes or less from me.

Every new hire for this company is essentially trained from the get-go to be a consultant, despite that not being everyone's role. It was standard protocol. There were about 20 new hires with me. During onboarding, we took a consulting course that really challenged me as it wasn't anything I experienced before. Every time someone said, "scope", I would just think of a Leupold rifle scope.

After onboarding, there was the 2-week mandatory training, which was essentially more consulting-oriented classes. This took place in a major city along the west coast where we were there for 2 weeks practically for free. Just the idea of being over 2,500 miles away from home was one of the biggest breaths of fresh air I've ever experienced. We took classes for 8 hours, we explored the city on the weekends, and even hiked up a mountain as a group activity.

That mountain hike was actually an interesting demonstration of team work. Our team lead purposely put this together, so that he could also visually point at who was marching ahead, who stayed back to help others, who was checking in, etc. There was no right or wrong, any expectation, it was nothing more or less than an observation to him, and to ourselves.

Training and fun is over, now we get into the heart of it. I'm immediately put on a project within my new home city with a bank. Then a manufacturing company. Then a hospital. All of these were short-term engagements where we were selling them Microsoft solutions. This was Intune and Defender - back when it was known as Advanced Threat Protection (ATP).

I was then on the bench for about 4 months. "The Bench" is a consulting term, or so I think. I didn't know anything about being on the bench, what it meant, how it could impact me, etc. Being on the bench is generally not a good thing because it means you're not chargeable to another client aka you're not billing time towards a client. Being on the bench, at least to this company, means you're expected to keep applying to other roles so you can get staffed, but until then, take training and get a new certification every 2 weeks. As someone who is a terrible test taker, this made my heart sink. The training and certifications are free regardless of the outcome, but passing a whole new test every 2 weeks is insane. Luckily, I was able to get a fundamentals certification that I believe saved me from getting fired. In hindsight, it does make sense. Executives are going to eventually wonder why they're paying me $60k/yr if I haven't been staffed to a client.

During bench time, I was finally staffed to a Managed Security Services (MSS) team of about 12-13 people (now we're at 40+). We were a small group of shared resources where all of us were staffed to multiple clients simultaneously. So we had the same managers and resources on multiple projects. This was nice for two reasons.

1.) If you're staffed to 4 projects and released from 1, you're still staffed to 3, so you're not on the bench. In other words, you remain chargeable.

2.) More clients means more tools and technologies to learn and play with, which means more experience, which means growth.

In the last 5 years, I've worked with clients in aerospace & defense, government, banking, manufacturing, and medical industries. I've worked with cloud & infrastructure security, cyber defense, data protection, and elements within, i.e. security information & event management (SIEM), endpoint detection & response (EDR), data loss prevention (DLP), file integrity monitoring (FIM), threat & vulnerability management (TVM), identity & access management (IAM), and governance, risk, & compliance (GRC). On the business service side, I helped facilitate a 24x7 business model for our remote security operations center (SOC) team. I trained and still train analysts on all shifts with different tools for different clients helping them navigate and utilize specific tools and how to apply it to our incident response plan (IRP) for that client.

Between then and now, I was promoted 3 more times. What helped was me positioning myself to being the backup for every subject matter expert (SME) I worked with. I didn't know the tool as much as the SMEs did, but I did know enough to know what it does, its purpose, and the alerting (if any), monitoring, and reporting (if any) aspects of that tool. I would say this is a key point if you want to be an architect. You don't need to know everything at a granular level, but you do need to know the basics of the what, where, when, and how. What is setup, where is it located, when does it do its purposeful actions, and how.

This isn't something that can be learned in a short period of time. A lot of grunt work, a lot of tedious tasks, and a lot of red tape, especially when your clients are in the public sector. The worst thing I ever experienced in this role was working with another team for a government client that made me work on an Excel spreadsheet with 25-30 tabs, VLOOKUPs everywhere, 15-20 pivot tables, and the output of all this was their threat & vulnerability management (TVM) metrics. I wish I was exaggerating when I said this, but it took me from 6am - 10pm (16 hours, not a typo) to start and finish this sheet. 50% because it was confusing, 50% because my laptop couldn't handle the size of this file. Finally 10pm hits, only to be told the real thing was already submitted and that this was "just a practice round". Oh, and this was also during a July where my A/C wasn't working nor my apartment complex was taking an effort to fix.

That was one of many inconvenient work tasks I've had, and there are countless I've had in the last 5 years, but that was easily the worst by far. What kept me with this team was the support group that came with it. These guys are nice personally and some of their work ethic has a coasting feel to it because they've been doing this longer than me. However, a work / life balance is perfected with this team, and that is really what matters to me. Some clients can be hell, but that's what a supportive team is for. Some clients can be hell, but in the end, you're going to come out with something you didn't have before.

Lessons Learned:

Identify, plan, execute, evaluate, adjust, and repeat. When this process becomes second nature, any goal becomes achievable. It's funny how this job works. If you break down infosec concepts, they apply to life like math where you do it almost every day but don't realize it.

There's certainly way more, but I found the above lesson to be the most important truthfully.

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Present Day:

On the professional side, my current role is a Technical & Compliance Lead for a client with an Azure GCC High environment. It's stressful, but being a jack-of-all-trades, I'm learning many valuable skills I can carry with me elsewhere. I'm also studying for the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP).

On the personal side, I have a girlfriend, I'm almost 30, and have really counted my blessings in the last year or two. I'm incredibly fortunate and lucky to have had the experience I've had in this field and the people I have in my life to this day. What's changed between then and now is an increased chance of burnout.

Burnout is real as fuck. Mental health is enormous and why a work / life balance is crucial for me. I was burnt out for a while until I discovered a game called Deep Rock Galactic - easily one of the best co-op games I've ever experienced. It's enough for me to unplug and reset my mental capacity. And hey, there's threat modeling concepts within it. :) I'm also interested in audio and sound design. This is a hobby of mine that tremendously helps with burnout. Also, walking. Taking daily walks is one of my favorite activities because I get to go outside, stretch, get the body mechanics in motion, and just think clearly to myself. It's almost like my meditation.

In my early to mid 20s, I was all about the work because it was all I really had. I was on the grind with commuting to college, doing homework, and finding roles to gain experience. Now that my 20s are closing up shop, I'm focused on my life now and what life is going to be like 30 years from now.

Who do I want in my life? Who do I want to exclude in my life? Where am I in life? Where do I want to end up in life? What life goals have I accomplished? What other life goals do I want to accomplish?

These are questions I now ask myself every day that can apply to a lot of general life concepts. Ultimately, it all boils down to what you value.

My Lessons to You:

Google. Take an initiative. CYA. Network. Get a hobby.

Best of luck to up and comers, newbies, seniors, and veterans who reside in this field with me. Please feel free to ask any questions.

Enjoy your Wednesday! submitted by /u/RifleWolverine
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