Going Pro (Google Style)

Part 4 of an ongoing series. Start with Part 1 here.

By November, I had a rhythm.

Morning: study block. Afternoon: some labs and some hands-on tinkering. Evening: reading, podcasts, occasionally staring at a terminal until something clicked. It wasn't glamorous. It worked.

The goal for these two months was clear: pass the Google Cybersecurity Professional Certificate. This was the one that felt different from Google IT Support — not because it's harder, but because it was the first curriculum I'd worked through that was explicitly about the thing I want to do. Networks, threats, incident response, SIEM tools, Python basics, risk frameworks. The actual domain.

Imposter syndrome spiked.

Here's something nobody really explains well about imposter syndrome: it doesn't just show up when you're starting. It shows up hardest when you're progressing. When you know just enough to understand how much you don't know yet.

There were days in November where I'd be mid-module on network security and a thought would surface: what exactly are you doing here? You're 50-something, coming from advertising, and you think you're going to work in a SOC?

I've developed a process for this. I don't fight the thought. I ask it a question back: what's your actual evidence I can't do this? It never has a good answer. Feelings, not evidence.

Then I went back to the module.

There were plateaus. Periods where the learning felt stalled — reading material, running labs, and nothing sticking the way it had the week before. I've hit these in every domain I've ever studied. They're not the end of anything. They're the part where the brain is consolidating rather than acquiring. You don't feel it happening. Then one day you realize you just answered a question that would have broken you two weeks ago.

You have to push through the plateaus without being able to see to the other side. That's the job.

December came. I sat the Google Cybersecurity Professional exam.

Passed.

It felt clean. The imposter syndrome tried its usual move — still just a Google cert — and I let it say its piece, then put the certificate in the vault and opened the next thing to study.

That's the move, I've found. Don't celebrate too long. Don't dismiss too hard. Acknowledge the win, log it, keep moving. The security field doesn't stop. Your learning shouldn't either.

By December 31, 2025, the scoreboard looked like this: Obsidian vault growing. Google IT Support: passed. Google Cybersecurity Professional: passed. Serious hours on TryHackMe, OverTheWire. A USB Rubber Ducky on my desk that I understood better every week. A preorder in for something arriving in January that would shift how I thought about wireless security entirely.

Five months in. Not done. Not close to done.

But somewhere between July 20th and December 31st, the alien feeling had become something else. Not comfort, exactly. More like: belonging.

Turns out I was always a hacker. I just spent 30 years with a different job title.