Post Mortem - Final Thoughts from The Summer Lab

The last time I felt this torn up about my professional life was on a WestJet flight headed into YYC returning from a week in Vancouver. I had attended CanSecWest, my first hacker conference.

I felt so alone when returning to my default world. My head was swimming. The depths of the ocean of Information-Security, my current Joe Job domain of expertise (and personal geek time-sink at home), had been revealed to me. I had been hanging around on the continental shelfs, and CanSecWest had shown me the drop off of the Mariana Trench. I was out of my league. I had so much to learn and to train.

Night time approach. I stared out the window, wondering if there would be someone there to pick me up. Turns out there wasn't. I was over tired, and felt almost broken somehow. It was not that I was depressed. Rather, I was elated. I was excited and energized about the industry and my possible futures within it. But there was a heaviness. If I wanted those futures I had to get to work. Or I would be left behind.

So Sunday night I'm driving home from my mother and father's home after my somewhat weekly visit. Storm clouds are blowing overhead and darkening the sky as I head south on the Deerfoot.  The window is open, the moist wind smelling like summer rain, and the radio is silent. I'm silent. The last day of my Leave of Absence was ending. Although I had gone through more then one introspective moment since the end of the lab, something in the air reminded me of Vancouver, and it hit me hard.

Instead of seeing how deep the industry is like after CanSecWest, I had seen inside myself, as cheesy as that sounds. Someone had lifted the lid of my capacity, pointed into it's liquid and said "See how deep that goes? Yeah, we won't get there today. But you could. But only if you do it."

I have to do it. No one else can do it. What I was shown is completely my own and has a taste and texture that only I create. It is my aesthetic. It's how I think, feel, move, and speak. And it is the challenge to me now not to let it sit unused. That's what The Summer Lab gave me. It was not an exposure to how huge an industry is and how talented the personalities are in it. It was an exposure to the depths and widths of my talents, and the humility and honesty I need to practice to fufill it. 

Now it's up to me to be the man taking the next step.