# The Grind, a Fallout, and a First Win

Part 3 of an ongoing series. [Start from Part 1 here.](https://braindump.0x8r41nr07.xyz/day-zero)

September 2025 came and went without a headline moment.

That's worth saying out loud, because if you're following anyone documenting a journey like this on the internet, you're seeing a curated highlight reel. The algorithm doesn't reward "spent four hours on a lab and watched a walkthrough because I was stuck." But that's what September was, mostly. Daily grind. Fundamentals. Earning the boring stuff.

There is no shortcut through the boring stuff. Anyone who tells you there is is selling something.

* * *

There was one moment worth mentioning, though it's not a technical one.

I had a falling out with two people in my cohort.

I'm not going to get into specifics. What I'll say is this: I detected something that felt like bullshit, I called it out, and the response was massively disproportionate. That's usually a sign you were right.

I don't do well with performative nonsense. I spent 30 years in advertising, which is practically the Olympics of performative nonsense, and I got very good at spotting it. When someone defends a weak position by going over the top emotionally instead of engaging with the actual argument, they've already told you everything.

I said: fine, fuck it, I don't need this. And I moved on.

Cohort dynamics are real. Your learning community matters. But a community that requires you to swallow bullshit as the entry fee isn't a community — it's a performance. I kept the good connections and dropped the rest.

One lesson from cybersecurity that applies to people: not every alert is worth investigating. Some are just noise.

* * *

October delivered the first real win.

I passed the **Google IT Support Professional Certificate**.

I want to be honest about what that felt like: good and insufficient simultaneously. Good because passing is passing, and I'd put the work in. Insufficient because the imposter syndrome was already running its loop — *it's just a Google cert, it doesn't mean anything real, anyone can pass this.*

That voice is a liar. It's also sometimes useful. I've stopped trying to silence it. I've started trying to interrogate it: *okay, you think this isn't enough — tell me what your actual evidence is.* It never has a good answer. It has feelings, not arguments. Feelings are data, not conclusions.

Then I went back to work.

* * *

October also opened up new platforms. I started toying with **OverTheWire** — wargames that test your command-line and Linux skills in increasingly unforgiving ways. I poked at **HackTheBox**. I was a beginner on both, and that was the point.

And the podcasts. God, the podcasts.

**Darknet Diaries** and **The Lazarus Heist** became the soundtrack to everything — commutes, cooking, evening walks. True crime for people who care about systems. Stories about state-sponsored attacks, the biggest digital heists ever run, hackers who got caught and ones who didn't. These weren't just entertainment — they were context. They showed me the scale of what I was getting into.

November was next. And November meant it was time to go pro.