I Think I Need to Lock In

This week was tough, dude. Lmao, I don’t even know what and where my life is going sometimes. Well… actually, I do know where it’s going, but there’s just so much happening around me that sometimes it feels like everything is moving at the same time. College, CPTS, programming, development, research, writing, projects, Mathematics, DSA, and somehow I’m still finding more things that I want to learn. Then I look at everything I’ve decided to do and wonder why I’m tired. Haha. I guess that’s what happens when you want to learn everything at once.

But even with everything going on, I know what I’m trying to build toward. I’ve been working on a web application recently, and that has actually been one of the more interesting things I’ve done lately. I’m slowly moving away from simply following traditional methodologies and starting to develop my own way of approaching things. I still respect the methodologies I’ve learned from CPTS and other resources because they’ve given me the foundation, but at some point you have to start thinking for yourself. You can’t keep following someone else’s checklist forever. You need to understand why that checklist exists, what it’s trying to achieve, and eventually develop your own process around it.

That’s probably one of the biggest changes I’ve noticed in myself recently. I’m not trying to throw away the traditional approach. I’m trying to understand it well enough that I can adapt it. Sometimes I’ll follow a methodology exactly as I’ve learned it, and sometimes I’ll look at a situation and think, “Wait… this doesn’t really make sense here.” That’s when I want to be able to step outside the usual process, investigate something else, and then decide whether that new approach belongs in my own methodology. I guess that’s what I mean when I say I’m slowly moving from traditional ways toward “my ways.” Haha.

There’s also just a lot going on in life outside of all this. Sometimes it gets difficult to manage everything without feeling like I’m falling behind somewhere. I can spend an entire day working on something technical and then realize that I haven’t touched something else I needed to do. Then I try to compensate for it the next day and suddenly I’m behind on something else. It’s a stupid cycle, but I’m slowly figuring it out. I think the biggest thing I need to learn right now isn’t necessarily how to do more things, but how to manage the things I’m already doing.

One thing I’m genuinely happy about this week is that I’ve submitted my research paper for publication. That’s something I’ve been working toward for a while, and finally getting the paper submitted felt pretty damn good. I don’t want to talk too much about the research yet because I’d rather wait until everything is actually published. Once it gets published, I’ll write about it properly and explain what I researched, why I chose the topic, what I actually did, where I conducted the research, and everything else surrounding the process. For now, I’m keeping that one under wraps. Once it’s out, though, I’ll definitely share the whole story here.

I’ve also been thinking seriously about getting PentesterLab Pro sometime after August or September. I think it could be a really good investment for me, especially because I genuinely want to improve my source code review skills. I’ve been getting more interested in understanding applications from the inside instead of only looking at them from the outside. There’s a huge difference between seeing an application and actually understanding what the developer wrote, how data flows through the code, where input gets processed, where trust boundaries exist, and where the application’s assumptions can go wrong.

Source code review is something I really want to become better at. I don’t want to look at a piece of code and immediately search for some vulnerability pattern just because I’ve seen it before. I want to understand what the application is actually doing first and then figure out where the security boundaries might fail. That’s another reason I’ve been spending more time on the development side. Building applications is slowly helping me understand what I’m actually looking at when I review someone else’s code.

I’ve thought about getting into bug bounty too. I’ve definitely considered picking a program, sitting down, and spending some serious time trying to find something interesting. But dude… I don’t even have enough time for everything I’m already doing. Lmao. Adding bug bounty hunting on top of CPTS, college, development, programming, research, and everything else would probably make me completely lose it. So for now, I’m not going to force it. I’d rather become better at the fundamentals first and then give bug bounty the attention it deserves when I actually have the time and skill to approach it properly. There’s no point jumping into something just because everyone else is doing it.

And somehow, in the middle of all this cybersecurity stuff, I also decided that I should start studying Mathematics and DSA. Well… here we go again. Apparently I’ve been told, “Do DSA BROSKI,” so here I am. Lmao. I’m slowly getting into it, and I already know this is going to be one of those subjects where I’ll probably spend an unreasonable amount of time staring at one problem wondering why my brain isn’t understanding it. But I think it’s worth doing. I’m not studying DSA because I suddenly want to become a competitive programmer. I want to understand the fundamentals behind how programs actually work, how data is organized, how algorithms behave, and why certain approaches are better than others. I guess I’m trying to build a stronger technical foundation overall.

And then there’s another thing I’ve started doing that I’m genuinely excited about. I’ve started looking into lower-level stuff. I’ve been experimenting with a small x86-related project while also studying the Linux source code and looking through the actual Linux repository. Yes, the actual Linux kernel source. It’s massive, and obviously I’m nowhere near understanding everything inside it, but that’s not really the point. I’m trying to become comfortable looking at large codebases and slowly figuring out how things are organized. I’m trying to understand how the pieces connect instead of pretending I can just open the repository and magically understand the entire thing.

If you want to look through the Linux source yourself, here’s the repository: https://github.com/torvalds/linux

Opening that repository for the first time is honestly kind of intimidating. There are directories for architecture-specific code, drivers, filesystems, networking, memory management, kernel functionality, and a ridiculous amount of other stuff. I’ve been going through small pieces and following things wherever they lead. Sometimes I’ll find a function, then follow another function, then another header, then another definition, and suddenly I’m ten files deep wondering how I ended up there. But honestly, that’s part of the fun.

It reminds me of pentesting in a weird way. You start somewhere, you don’t know exactly where the path will take you, you follow one clue, then another, and eventually you start building a mental map of the system. That’s exactly the kind of thinking I want to develop. I don’t necessarily need to understand everything immediately. I just need to become comfortable being somewhere I don’t understand yet and slowly work my way toward understanding it.

The more I work on all of these things, the more I realize that I probably need to take a step back from everything else for a little while. Not permanently. Just enough to actually focus. I think I’ve reached the point where I need to stop adding new things to my plate every time I find something interesting. There’s always another certification, another platform, another programming language, another project, another course, another technology, and another person telling you that you absolutely need to learn something.

If I keep chasing all of them, I’ll end up knowing a little about everything and deeply understanding almost nothing. That’s not what I want. I want depth. I want to be able to sit with a problem for hours without immediately looking for the fastest answer. I want to understand the systems I’m working with. I want to build things, break things, read source code, write my own tools, improve my methodology, and actually remember what I’ve learned six months later.

So maybe I need to slow down a little.

CPTS is still the main thing. Development is still important because I want to understand applications properly. Programming is still something I want to keep improving. Mathematics and DSA have now joined the party apparently. The research paper is submitted. PentesterLab might happen later. Bug bounty can wait. And everything else can probably wait too.

I don’t need to do everything right now. I just need to keep getting better at the things that actually matter.

This week definitely wasn’t perfect. There were moments where I felt like I was doing too much, moments where I questioned whether I was spending my time correctly, and moments where I just wanted to close the laptop and do absolutely nothing. But looking back, I did actually make progress. I built something. I researched. I studied. I wrote. I experimented. I started looking deeper into source code. I submitted my research. And I’m slowly developing a methodology that actually feels like mine.

So maybe the week wasn’t as bad as I thought. Maybe I just need to stop looking at everything I haven’t done and start paying attention to everything I actually did.

Anyway, that’s enough from me for this week. I’m probably going to disappear into my laptop again, continue working on the application, continue grinding CPTS, continue getting confused by DSA, and probably open the Linux source code again just to make my life harder. Lmao. Maybe that’s exactly what I need right now.

Less noise. More focus. More depth. More building. More breaking. More understanding.

I think I just need to lock in.

See you next week.