Back in 2021, I lost my job because of COVID. That wasn’t the official reason, but it didn’t take much for all of us who lost our positions in my old department to connect the dots. Soon after, I was approached by a recruiter to start a compliance job at Apple, though, given that I was fresh off of a job and didn’t really agree with Apple’s overall business philosophy (and seemingly being low-balled) I declined (but I would be lying if I said there weren’t days I wished I had taken the job to see where it would’ve taken me). It was the first time in over five years that I had basically unlimited free time – a summer vacation, if you will – and, since I had been wanting to learn how to program and do a few other things with my newfound freedom I set out to study for a new career and give myself some time to enjoy the time off and reflect a lot of changes I had been going though, personally.

Relying on my savings and luckily having the support of family, I took a sabbatical and tried to find out what I really wanted to do with my life. For a while, I thought what I wanted to do was Data Science – it was the hot, new job of 2021 and paid well, so I started studying for it (after speed running Final Fantasy 7 on the Switch and watching a bunch of shows). After a while though, and particularly after a vacation I took with my friends who were Data Scientists, I was disillusioned. Seeing my friends “work from home” and have countless meetings to demonstrate data to their higher ups didn’t really seem like my cup of tea – ideally, I thought, I’d find something more on the backend. That’s when I stumbled onto Cybersecurity. It was another “school” at UC Berkeley (my alma mater) that was heavily related to Data Science – UCB offered a MIDS (Master in Data Science) or a MICS (Masters in Cybersecurity).

Having my heart set onto breaking into Cybersecurity, I looked into everything I could to try and start learning about it. I took an introductory course offered by the University of Washington provided by Coursera, and while it took me a little longer than I’d like to complete it, I also was learning about fundamental Computer Science concepts through a YouTube channel called CrashCourse that had a very high level overview of the fundamentals of Computer Science. Additionally, I started looking into IT and soon started (and completed) the Google IT Certification on Coursera to strengthen my knowledge base on computer stuff. After trying and not finishing Google’s Programming in Python course – mainly because I wasn’t really too confident with my programming skills (I plan to complete it soon or have completed it depending on when you read this), I figured I really needed to try and learn the fundamentals of programming since it would be very helpful in my Cybersecurity career, per the UofWashington course.

Although, despite trying to learn to program in my early twenties – it never really stuck, and after finally learning the fundamentals, I think I was just too impatient. That, and a little too distracted with the freedom of living on my own in one of the best cities in the world, San Francisco. I spent a lot of time almost starting to learn programming, but I always ended up doing something else – running, watching Futurama, going out to meet new people, you know, kid stuff. It wasn’t until I found myself in my late 20s, early 30s without a job that I realized I didn’t really have the patience (or time) before to learn programming. At least for me, it’s taken a lot to know that it’s okay to take your time with complex subject matter and not be a master at it as quickly as others would be; for instance, it always baffled me how people claimed to master programming quickly through things like boot camps.

I’ll never understand how people did coding boot camps (unless, that is, they already had some kind of technical background to build off), having to learn a bunch of new, complex concepts for 12-16 hour days just didn’t seem feasible (or honestly, how the brain works), so I kept saying I’d teach myself. And I did eventually, I kept trying different YouTube tutorials and Coursera classes, but it wasn’t until I stumbled onto CS50 on YouTube that things really started to change for me. Professor David J Malan, one of my newest personal heroes, had a way of keeping my attention and explaining programming concepts in a way I could understand. Admittedly, I had to watch his lectures multiple times to really let the concepts sink in – I think I watched like 3-5 different years (and each at least once) of CS50 just to see how the concepts changed, if they did, and what they ended up focusing on over time. Also, it allowed me to try and figure out the assignments, which after “Hello, World” were a bit difficult, haha. Though, I can’t thank him enough for teaching me the basics of the C language as it really help elucidate how languages like Python have built off of it. I always did do better learning something new by having various examples.

Of course, with programming and me desiring a newer technical role, this was something I was determined to do, even if it was going to take me longer than a lot of people. Though, a comforting thought I had from a colleague was that, “it probably takes about a year to start thinking like a programmer.” – it gave me hope that perhaps it wasn’t just me having a somewhat mental block on how all of these conditionals worked with functions and variables and different language syntaxes…

Now, in the late summer/early fall of 2024, I’ve just finished up an RPG tutorial by Jack Mott, also on YouTube, and while I wouldn’t say I am a master at the Go language (the RPG was part of series called GameswithGo), doing those tutorial videos gave me such a better understanding of how everything links together in a program, and I finally feel like I’m a solid intermediate programmer instead of just “not a” beginner. For instance, I’m finally getting the hang of how to interpret terminal error messages and using GitHub.

Of course, programming is just one of the many skills that are valuable in Cybersecurity. In addition to programming, I kept studying and completed the IBM’s Cybersecurity Analyst Professional Certificate over about 8 months or so since I had also spent some of the time developing myself into a recording artist. While I won’t spend too much time on my time becoming an artist, and while I don’t think I’ll ever be a performing artist – I can’t thank my friend enough for encouraging me to explore my creative side. It’s definitely something I’ll be nurturing when I find the time, and I think just having the experience of writing out verses and recording them alongside my friends will be an experience I look back on with fondness since it also provided a lot of catharsis at a time when I needed an outlet.

Being an artist and supporting my artist friend, it allowed me to tap into my already semi-decent social media management skills (as well as toy around with Generative AI (e.g. NightCafe) to “create” album arts for my friend and I). I, personally, have a Twitter/X account with 25k followers – it might be how you found this blog actually, but it was also a nice chance to see if what I was doing would make a difference for my friends. In one instance, I was able to help propel my friend who had 3 monthly listeners to over 3,000 for a while – it was a great feeling, mainly because my friend deserves to be listened to on a mass scale. Don’t worry, I won’t be promoting myself or him on this post, I just brought it up to expand on what I’ve been doing with my time without a formal job.

While I still do support my friend when I can, I have been making an earnest effort to get back into the workforce. Along with certifications I mentioned above, I’ve currently been studying for the CompTIA Network+ exam and plan to go for the Security+ and Linux+ as well as eventually going back to UC Berkeley for that Masters in Cybersecurity – I’m hoping to be a “double bear” someday sooner rather than later.

To be honest, the main reason I didn’t jump back into a Masters program automatically was that I didn’t want to rush back into school unless I was absolutely positive it was for something I would want to do for the rest of my life (seeing how grad school is kind of pricey if you didn’t know), and now that I’ve been studying computer science for almost three years at this point, I can say I’m glad I waited to find something that will always be able to satisfy my never-ending curiosity. There’s always soo much to know in Cybersecurity and usually by the time you learn it, there’s something new that’s been developed that you have to learn (cough, cough, AI). While that would normally intimidate people, I found in my old jobs that I wasn’t stimulating my brain enough. Sure, starting a new project would provide its challenges, but once I got the hang of it, I could finish my tasks pretty quickly and struggle to be stimulated the rest of the day.

Anyway, here I am, about three and half years later: a fledgling programmer, a developing computer scientist, a social media consultant, a recording artist (and oh, a pet sitter when on the side) with over a decade of formal work experience. While I didn’t have an “actual” job with the usual hours, I couldn’t help but stay busy. I’m one of those people who always needs to be doing something, and I’m while I wish I would’ve started programming when I was 3 years old so I could’ve been a multi-millionaire by now – I’m kind of glad I didn’t since there’s always a risk, when you’re a kid, that you’ll get “bored” of something – and I’ll tell you, nowadays, I don’t think I’ll ever be bored again.

So, in sum, while I wish I could’ve done a lot of different things differently, I’m glad I took the time to figure it out on my own. While I could’ve gotten a job at Apple and spent the rest of my life in compliance (though, ideally I would’ve leveraged that into Cybersecurity as well), I’m glad I took a chance on me, and took the time to explore myself to see what I’m capable of doing. I’m lucky enough to have a family that supported me while I completely reinvented myself into, hopefully, someone that can support them for when they need it, for as long as they need it.