Distraction comes in many forms, and today I wanted to write about some of the good things around us that can be distracting, which are very different from the cliches about social media and entertainment. There’s a lot to say about those, but I won’t be saying them here, as so very often, useful and/or meaningful things commit an equal amount of damage.
I haven’t been applying for jobs lately, and it kills me because the clock is ticking and I need to get this show on the road. But something stranger has been going on inside of me, as I face head-on the sheer enormity of information relevant to my profession, and the realization that if I keep biting off more than I can chew, it will seriously hamper my ability to navigate the next few months.
Back in my 20s, I was friends with a number of people who had dedicated their lives to Christian missions, helping the poor, etc. I, too, at various points, thought my life would be centered around these things, and I pushed back pretty hard when it felt God was telling me to put them aside and focus on the technical certifications one of my companies had put in front of me. In a weird way, especially when you’re young, I think you have grandiose plans for yourself, and it’s easy to find these in supposedly humble roles. After all, what could be wrong about meaningful roles that help in-need or impoverished people?
Too often this is actually vanity and arrogance in hiding. To make a macro difference in the world, you need to be in a position to make that difference, and very few people are privileged enough to play ball in that arena. But why we aspire to that ideal could possibly be explained by cultural upbringing and indoctrination, combined with a classic desire to be popular and/or influential. In the real world, though, God typically calls us to much humbler situations, which flies in the face of our pride. “But I am a good person! I want to make the world better! I want to make a difference!” Do you? Would you surrender your ability to take credit for it? Or do you try to project that identity everywhere you go?
And this is not to beat up missions people, what I’m getting at is that it’s so easy to do this in every other area, too. The busyness and the dedication become evidence of the value we crave, rather than actual progress toward any goals that God himself desires for our lives. Busyness is not a virtue.
I have moved twice this year, now, and while I technically have more space at my current place than my last place, I’m downright sick of having as much as I do, especially books. (I know, I know, ‘this again?’). What’s hard about getting rid of some of these books (all non-fiction), is that they contain so much gosh darn good information, much of it relevant to my profession. But God never called me to all of the subjects represented on my bookshelf. Every study side-project was something I tacked on thinking, “I can handle this”, and while that might have been true with the first side project or two, it abruptly stopped by the third, forth, and fifth, to the point where my life is something of a confused mess of projects, hence why the critical “applying for jobs” is temporarily on hold. Getting a job is important, yes, but even more important is getting my life on track, unless I want to spend the last of my money floundering in a sea of information and getting nothing out of it. It’s a literal “come to Jesus” moment. I can’t keep living like this.
I’ve mentioned this a million times, but back in college, I became so focused on side-projects that I really suffered getting through my degree. I don’t know if it was arrogance, boredom, pride, or what, but for some reason, I just couldn’t help myself, and it’s a shame, because I didn’t have to hate college so much, I could have just stayed the course and not hurried myself with anything else.
I don’t pretend to be an expert on hearing from God, and a lot of people who think they hear from God are full of shit, but God does speak to us and does impress certain things upon our lives. They are usually not grandiose things, but they are almost always deeply meaningful simply because they come from God. As I worked my way through a number of books late last night, I asked questions such as, “Has God called me to study this or is this merely a distrction?”, which really helped me start to narrow things down. I’m not saying your bookshelf can’t have fun or interesting books or anything like that, only, books are huge distractions for me, and learning-based projects play a large role in my life. I have to learn. I die inside if I’m not learning. But when I take on too much, it becomes stressful and I lose focus, and end up wasting a metric shit ton of time, while neglecting exercise, friends, and time with God.
It isn’t difficult to see value in things. But seeing value in something is very different from answering God’s calling in your life.
I have access to a particular IT training platform, which costs a steep annual fee. This access will expire in the next few months, and I won’t be renewing it. Through it, I have access to a tremendous number of courses and certification training programs, and it’s completely overwhelming because what do you focus on? Many of these cybersecurity training companies have adopted the streaming-service business model of hoarding content to “add value” and then locking everything behind a pay wall. Some of the content is really good, and I enjoy having video lectures instead of reading boatloads of text on a screen (“my eyes!”), but while so much of the “content” has very clear value, that doesn’t mean I should be studying all of it, or any of it. I am looking forward to not having access anymore, because that will eliminate the temptation to take it all on.
What I’m really starting to prefer are training companies that specialize in one particular area of security, who build a really strong certification program around that. So many companies are trying to be the preeminent go-to enterprise subscription for all of the things, that they are spreading themselves incredibly thin trying to cover everything. It’s not that the training is bad, it just doesn’t go very deep, and quickly becomes outdated. I was shocked going through some training on Threat Hunting, just to realize that studying offensive security while paying close attention to the network traffic generated by your tools would probably teach you so much more. This is what happens when you focus on bulk training instead of drilling people on the fundamentals. If I were a hiring manager, I would not give much credit to that certification.
Cruft! So much cruft!
One thing that is super popular in application security these days is AI/LLM security testing, probably because so many companies now try to incorporate chatbots on their websites, but have no clue what they’re doing. It’s such a popular skill to ask for, it’s tempting to think I should study that, but at the end of the day, chatbots are a technology that largely operate on top of web technologies. If you’re skilled at ai testing but weak at web, you’re kind of shooting yourself in the foot. The same applies to mobile security testing if you aren’t familiar with both web and API testing.
Do most training companies differentiate any of these considerations? No! They just crank out those certifications and plop them out there for the hopefuls.
Anyway, to get back on topic, this is what I’m wrestling with.
“Supposed value”. That’s how I wrote it in my journal. So many things have supposed value. Volunteering has value, study has value, accomplishment has value…but does any of it fit into your life, or are you simply shoehorning it in to feel good about yourself?
See, after I was pushed out of my first software job, it was easy to feel super anxious about all of the requirements most job postings had. But at the end of the day, several places were willing to take a chance on me, if only I had focused more on the fundamentals. My saving grace was that God gave me the perfect job anyway, even though it absolutely didn’t seem like the perfect job at first.
Not all distractions are bad, but I could have wrapped this study up several years ago if I had been more focused on what God was specifically showing me to study. To be fair, I think I had to learn a host of lessons along the way, so it’s not some sort of personal failure, only a tough awakening to some things that will probably help me through the rest of my life.
Do I spend time with God? Do I actively pursue his will in my life, or am I busy chasing my own personal glory or trying to defuse my own personal fears? Sometimes we have choices, too, but if you don’t spend any time seeking God’s will in your life, would you even know if it was being left up to you?