As I was thinking about my first “return” post, I couldn’t help but think about the phrase, “Life comes at you fast.” Those who know me know that I aspire to be more Stoic in nature the older I get, so I found this article that kind of summed up everything I’d had on my mind coming back into the blog (https://dailystoic.com/life-comes-at-you-fast/). Shortly after my last post, I lost my mother. To say I was a completely broken human being would be an embarrassingly huge understatement. While I knew I had to remain strong for my family, internally I was shattered. Then just a few months later, a trusted colleague unexpectedly passed. I’ve thought of him daily ever since I heard the news. Lastly, my family and I have been plagued with just about any virus you can name since the beginning of the year 2023 (COVID finally reared its ugly head on us, sinus infections, upper respiratory infections, ear infections, pink eye, and an unnamed one that has wreaked havoc on me personally for well over a week and honestly made me wish I had COVID again instead). Not to mention countless other small maladies in between the cracks of time that you just end up dealing with.
But, its important to remember that all things pass, good or bad, and while we may not be able to control the things that happen to us, we can control how we perceive and respond to those things and events. Personally, I’ve felt like I’ve been on autopilot for the last 7 months or so, just rolling with the punches, doing the best I can to keep my head above water and still be as present as I can, both professionally and in my home life. I’m sure many of you have experienced similar, or perhaps even worse, events. We do our best and we keep marching forward.
So this post is about marching forward; getting back into the action; taking up the reigns once again. This is my own rally call to pick this blog back up and get focused again on building content, refocus on the OSCP, reforge an area of the site for my students, start tinkering with IT projects again, and continue collecting valuable cybersecurity information resources and sharing them. I believe my first order of business will be to revisit the Arch laptop, give you all a baseline of where I’m at, and then begin building towards the OSCP. Earlier in the year I told myself that this was the year to finally finish what I had started 4 years ago — and I intend to keep my word.