Update

It is... Refreshing to feel like I don't have to stay glued to the news.

It feels a little odd, which is just a reminder of how much we adjusted to the craziness of the last four years. 

I had been pushing off some personal decisions for the past year. Well, that's not quite true. I had thought I'd get into infosec/threat hunting, but I failed the polygraph and then there was a pandemic and now it's been a year.

So, no transition to infosec is lined up. I've had the chance to learn my current job, and there are things I like and things I'm not as fond of. I like learning, and solving puzzles/problems. I just got my AWS Cloud Practitioner certification yesterday, and they want me to start working on the next one (Solutions Architect). The cloud is kinda interesting, as are containers (another piece of technology I've worked with a little in the course of my duties).

Its... Not infosec. And it doesn't fit that burning need, which I'm not sure how to explain? That drive that has me posting about all sorts of public policies. Economics, health, justice... 

That desire to serve, and the frustration at how hard it can be to do just that. Or, well, to find a position that uses what I think are my talents to the best of my ability. (I would say I have been underutilized for quite a bit of my life. I can ignore that in the joy of learning new things, and no knowledge is ever truly wasted. They all give insight and perspective on my various views. But, well. Once the challenge of absorbing a ton of new info goes, it's harder to ignore that what I'm doing is not necessarily what I want to be doing. My current job has potential, mostly because there's still a TON I don't know, and it looks like there will always be new technologies and things to learn. But that just means I can probably ignore that sense of not being where I want to be.)

Is it worth it, to keep pushing on? Idk... It's frustrating. It always feels like a struggle, and it doesn't feel like I ever get noticed or get the support I need. I try to focus on the things I can control (ie me. Job hunting, networking, all those things you're supposed to do to get the jobs you want). Idk, those never quite seem to work out. I mean, I'm a bit of an odd duck and I don't actually know about many jobs for doing what I want to do. Maybe a think tank or a politicians staff or something? Except most of those jobs seem to go to highly connected Ivy League interns who can afford the low pay of a starter job. Idk, I could be wrong. That's just the impression I got back during one of my job hunting stints. 

Too bad I can't get paid well just to blog my various thoughts. 

Alas, I do have bills that actually need to get paid. And my job is interesting. On any given day I might be updating trying to figure out why we're seeing an error on a particular service (I'm trying not to go into too much detail because letting everyone know what systems you use is a gift to hackers), or figuring out how to update a job so that it runs correctly, or fix an issue with a container, or add an environment to a tool for putting in hot fixes, or figure out that another team needs to add a host to a file, or update their firewalls so we can connect.

Its a mishmash where we're kind of jacks of all trades (masters of none), and generally are the first to deal with a problem since we help identify where the problem is and can direct it to the right team to fix it.

I have spent quite a bit of my life lea how to be a master generalist, if that makes sense. You see... As a leader you don't have the time to master Every. Public. Policy. Topic. 

There is no way I could be an expert on infrastructure, economics, healthcare, logistics, education, the military, foreign policy, national security, information technology, etc. It's too much for any one person. 

But knowing enough to ask the right questions? To tell when your experts know what they're talking about? To know what sorts of experts you need to come up with a real solution to a problem?

That's part of why I write so much about groupthink, and organizational behavior and the like. I don't need to be an expert in everything, I want to know how to best use the experts around us. (being an officer in the Army was good practice for this, as my NCOs had a helluva lot more experience than I did as a brand new lieutenant.)

Anyways. There's still a ton to learn about tech, and it suits me better than some of the other jobs I've done. 

Maybe I can keep an eye out for an infosec position in my company.