iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

But I live for being a girlie pop with friends. If you can't girlie pop with the girlie pops, what is there to even live for???

It’s been so weird to have an existential crisis at 9am, a 15 minute pre-panic of business failure at 10:30, an article breakthrough at 1p, mind-bending coach call at 3p…all to get through rush hour traffic to be a girlie pop for dinner with my new Chicago friends. “How’s your day been?” 😅😅😅

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Today, me and my coach talked about the long term affects that being a minority in a white-dominated industry could have on a person of color, and most specifically a black woman. I will need to spend significant time unpacking it…I’m truly gagged by the influence…

Elizabeth Warren @elizabeth-warren.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

A bad job is definitely a hard one to recover from. It's more than losing skill, I believe if you have a capacity to learn, you can always sharpen you skills over time. It's the lack of brain power used and how strenuous it will be to get that back quickly when you need it.

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Reposted by InfoSteph (92%)

Donald Trump is now the first president in American history to own and regulate his own bank. Just one more opportunity to feast off the American people.

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I'm working on a micro course on AI literacy for a client, so of course I am taking note of how these instructors teach and the tools they seem to be using, as well as how they choose to illustrate points to the learners.

A conversational teacher is cool, but if they just draw and talk, I have no anchor with written words to remember all the stuff they're throwing at me. And I can't even pause to write because all there is on the slide is a bunch of scribbles and stick figures. Conversation + words + drawing = YES

We all learn differently and that means that some instructors will jive more or less than others depending on who the learner is and their needs. I tend to like a more thorough teacher, one with lots of written and spoken words, and a bit of illustration while they are talking.

So, this ends up being a pretty jarring experience as a learner AND it does not even seem (so far) like this switch was justified. He's literally explaining things my grandma could explain. Why was a security expert needed for this? Is this an intentional choice??? WHY???

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And I'm not even going to speak to the optics of it because they kind of speak for themselves. What I will say is that the teaching style of the male instructor is VERY VERY different from the woman instructor. She is very thorough in her teaching style and he is very conversational and illustrative

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I'm taking this Project+ course (don't ask) and during what seems to be the security portion of it, they switch out the woman instructor for a male instructor. At first, I thought maybe the security stuff was complex and that's why they brought him in. But watching the first video? NOPE.

InfoSteph (92%) @stephandsec.com · 13/09/2026

All this time and I think my weighted blanket has been causing my Achilles tendinitis…

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InfoSteph (92%) @stephandsec.com · 10/09/2026

Another random thing we never question: when you're getting a medical procedure done, most of the time you're meeting that person for the first time or you've only met them once before, but you have to just trust they're going to be careful with you...isn't that trippy?

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InfoSteph (92%) @stephandsec.com · 10/09/2026

I have been seeing and hearing that, even my own mom was saying this morning how she has been let down so much that she has had to become a bit of everything. I'm down for that, doing one thing was a bit boring.

InfoSteph (92%) @stephandsec.com · 10/09/2026

What do you feel like when you have to lead with your accomplishments to feel acknowledged? Do you play that game? I struggle to, sometimes when people ask what I do, I ask them why they want to know...feels invasive. Now that I am going solo, I have to have a speech ready and I hate that LOL.

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InfoSteph (92%) @stephandsec.com · 09/09/2026

I am so sick of this summer weather. Where is my fall???

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InfoSteph (92%) @stephandsec.com · 03/09/2026

Also, cannot believe I’m 24k away from 400,000 learners across my courses on LinkedIn learning. I cannot believe it at all. If I wasn’t currently selling myself, I wouldn’t have even checked to see what the number was. I think I JUST got used to saying 300k instead of 250k.

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InfoSteph (92%) @stephandsec.com · 03/09/2026

Gloria Steinem, too?? Wow.

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InfoSteph (92%) @stephandsec.com · 03/09/2026

I updated my LinkedIn network with what’s going on over on my end and my transition into working for myself and why was I nervous to do that? A decent amount of support and I feel free releasing it to the “world”.

InfoSteph (92%) @stephandsec.com · 31/08/2026

You know, though I feel dumb every day (which reminds me of my first days in cybersecurity 😂), I think it’s overall a good experience for me, anxiety or no. I guess it means I’m learning? 😂😂😂

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InfoSteph (92%) @stephandsec.com · 04/08/2026

Today I learned the universe has an age. Of course I knew it had to…I just didn’t know we knew what it was. 13.8 billion years? Wow. Boy do I feel like a speck. It’s already truly humbling to be one of billions…to exist in 3 quarters of a century within billions of years??? Wow.

I’ll still be in cybersecurity I think. Just not in the way I have been. Not on the technical side. Playing more to my evolved strengths. And if the way I want to engage with it doesn’t want me back, I’ll happily find another mountain to climb. Y’all can keep it. I genuinely love it for you.

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In truth, I’ve been thinking about this for years. But sunk cost fallacy and all that. It took a VERY misaligned role after a season of solitude to finally course correct. Stability is a seducer, man. And she’s good… Fortune has smiled on me. I’ve done amazing things. But I gotta get the hell on.

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I’m finally giving up. I haven’t been this excited and hopeful about the future in years. Well, excited and hopeful as one can be in our current circumstances. I’m grieving the career I had but…I’m also pissing on its grave. And I’m thankful to have discovered what I love to do in the process.

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Every step of the way, my experiences in this industry chipped away at me. Learning security stuff was soooo much fun. Doing security work was soooo not. There are a million reasons why that is and it’s not the actual work that’s the issue. Though, that on-call rotation bs can absolutely go to hell.

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Lesley Carhart @hacks4pancakes.com · 31/07/2026

I was so excited to join this industry. From the moment I declared my concentration as a new CS student 15 years ago, I was so excited to challenge myself and learn something so freaking cool. A young writer turned tech professional…it was such a big shift for me. But I was so hungry and hopeful.

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Reposted by InfoSteph (92%)

I hate this. www.reddit.com/r/ITCareerQu...

-hacks4pancakes-
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6m ago
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I was kind of thinking of doing a TikTok or something to reflect this. I am so tired of saying the same awful thing about cybersecurity on here hundreds of time, I'm not trying to be a gatekeeper or ahole.

I mentor young people for free. I want them to love IT and cybersecurity.

There. Are. No. Jobs. I'm soeffingtired. Cyber is full. There are no jobs.

The market has crashed. You will not get a job from a bootcamp. You will not get a career from WGU unless you did insane self study before hand. You will not get a job with a Security+ or CEH. HackTheBox and TryHackMe mean less than nothing to HR.

You had better have a Bachelors in CS from a credible school or similar. You had better have your Sec+ and CySA or OSCP. You had better be networking, doing projects, and getting top scores in CTFs. You had better have at least 2 years working in full time IT on your resume. You're competing with people with 4+ who have been laid off.

I am ready to throw fists at schools and influencers selling it otherwise. You have to fight to survive in this field these days and almost all of us have taken massive pay hits. It's not due to some magic AI. It's a rush on the field with glowing sales pitches, and a terrible global market.

Don't get into cybersecurity, or IT in general frankly, unless you have a box of torn apart computer parts on your shelf and a folder of projects on disk before even considering it. You will have to hustle. You'll get treated like crap and paid like crap. Your life will be old grey hairs like me telling you about how we got a job at a bar and you'll be finishing your 3rd 10.000 dollar cert. I can't fix that. Do it only if you love this stuff enough to deal with the unbearable market and all the shit you'll deal with for months looking for a low paid job. I see mentees in tears every single week and I am at the end of my rope.

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InfoSteph (92%) @stephandsec.com · 27/07/2026

I think I’m gonna hibernate til September. It is now the kind of hot that I don’t like. BUT! For the first summer in years, I enjoyed my outdoor moments. I wore a sweater in June! I have YET to see the temp above 95. This is living.

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InfoSteph (92%) @stephandsec.com · 25/07/2026

I repotted a plant for the first time and why was that the most stressful experience ever??? LOL. And I planted a seed disk I got from the Obama Presidential Center in its old pot, so now I’ll have to see what grows from that! Hope they all survive 😅

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InfoSteph (92%) @stephandsec.com · 21/07/2026

I’m giving birth in private right now. That’s a wording that most accurately describes what I’m going through. It’s scary, it’s daunting, it’s painful. But I’m filled with hope and love and wonder.

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InfoSteph (92%) @stephandsec.com · 19/07/2026

I give my dog a heart attack every time I sneeze. The way she jumps, you would have sworn I set off a firecracker in here.

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Reposted by InfoSteph (92%)

Ian Coldwater 🧊🚫 @lookitup.baby · 18/07/2026

This is the food supply chain equivalent of “[software] is insecure because they put out a lot of CVEs” It’s GOOD that they patch and disclose a lot of vulnerabilities, actually. Who you really need to worry about are the ones who don’t think they have any

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InfoSteph (92%) @stephandsec.com · 18/07/2026

I’m free! No more being in the presence of an insecure, evil person. You have no idea how much peace I finally feel. To know I don’t have to talk to someone EVER AGAIN?! I have cried such happy tears.

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InfoSteph (92%) @stephandsec.com · 29/05/2026

But alas, you get no redos. And I’m sure there are things that have happened as a result of that time that I’d never take back. And I’m in a really, really good place with myself. I was in utter inner turmoil then. Now, it’s just a little turmoil. Heh. The story is still in progress.

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InfoSteph (92%) @stephandsec.com · 29/05/2026

If I were who I am today, things would definitely have gone differently. Don’t get me wrong, that time was magical. Finally, I’m a part of a “you should have been there…” moment. I always miss those. But who I surrounded myself with personally…I wonder if that was the true mistake.

InfoSteph (92%) @stephandsec.com · 29/05/2026

During the peak of InfoSec Twitter days, I gave a lot of myself freely. I didn’t even think about it and when I chose to fade into near obscurity, I cited exhaustion. I had never intended to be as “known” or as “perceived” as I was. I’ve been reflecting lately on that time.

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InfoSteph (92%) @stephandsec.com · 28/05/2026

7.8 miles and 16 flights of stairs, too. Some was in comfy clothes while I walked my dog. A large chunk was in a summer dress while the weather dropped 20 degrees and in flats. 😭 I’m still grateful to experience this slow creep into the summer.

InfoSteph (92%) @stephandsec.com · 28/05/2026

18,000 steps today. Who do I think I am??

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InfoSteph (92%) @stephandsec.com · 20/05/2026

Finally, my text messages are all read! I hate seeing that badge count, makes me feel unproductive lol.

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InfoSteph (92%) @stephandsec.com · 18/05/2026

I literally walked the weekend away. My calves are so sore lol.