blog date; 11/30/2025
slight ray of hope for the future
It's 4:13 AM and I'm writing this from the receptionist computer at a job I hate. A job I commute to for two hours a day. A job that pays minimum wage and forces me to deal with overgrown manchildren. Lately, I've been spending a lot of time just lazing around. I want to expand my horizons and do more, yet I remain stagnant. The desire to fill the world with color, laughter, and hope feels like a fantasy always just out of my reach. Regrettably, I’ve written all this before in my last blog. This has been a recurring theme for most of my life. Every time I want to do something, I get a sudden jolt of energy - like, this is it, I’m finally going to do the thing - but then I always fall back into the same loop where I can’t follow through. In another universe, maybe I’d be an ouroboros: cursed by the gods to spin around in the dirt trying forever to eat my own tail. Recently I learned to use tools like Aircrack and HashCat, which led me deeper into router security and network fundamentals. I've always enjoyed tinkering with tech and took my own computer security seriously, but this opened up more doors to peer behind. And yet, even with something I know I want to do, I can’t get myself to take the next steps. It’s like being an artisan trapped in his own mind. Surrounded by a million colors and the finest hand-crafted brushes, unable to lift his hands to paint.
I always knew I wanted to get into cybersecurity. Even back in middle school, shutting off my friends’ computers in the lab by running commands on the local network made me feel euphoric. I loved the thrill of making computers bend to my will. Millions of microscopic transistors doing exactly what I told them. If something didn’t work, it wasn’t because they hated me, or because they weren’t “feeling it,” and it definitely wasn’t because I was the weird kid who didn’t talk to anyone. It was because I messed up somewhere. And when I fixed it, the computer responded as if to congratulate me: You did it! Now let’s do even better.
I don’t know exactly when I went off course, but somewhere along the way I stopped caring where life took me. I wasted time and money on excuses, chose a major I knew I’d hate, dropped out of college, chose terrible people to be with, and was terrible in relationships myself. I've been hurt and I’ve hurt others. If I had spent those years doing what I truly love, maybe I’d already be working as a cybersecurity analyst. Right now, all I want is to leave this job and pray for a chance at a Help Desk Technician position. The thought of fixing computers excites me. I imagine myself in a dusty, dim room lit only by monitors, waiting for a ticket so I can help someone with their machine. Maybe I’m romanticizing it, but it definitely beats this.
Lately, what’s been keeping me afloat is finally deciding to get my CompTIA A+ certification. I know I’m overqualified for it, but it feels like a fresh start. As a college dropout who can’t study for things I don’t care about (*ahem ahem* SATs), I know not to expect job offers right away, even with the A+. But this is something I want. I want to start somewhere. I want to learn. I want to work with an entire office's worth of hardware and actually understand what's happening. How does this work? What are these ports? What's an ARP table? How do you clear yourself from ARP logs? MAC randomization? This is fun. I don’t care about making six figures or being some Matrix hacker. I just love computers. I think they’re fun. And I want to understand them so deeply I might as well be a Martian Tech-Priest from the year 40,000.
This is where I belong.
I just think they're neat!