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COVID-19 Gratitude 1: Work That Matters

I’ve always been driven by my work — as a journalist, as someone responsible for completing the business my father left behind five years ago and especially in the role I play in the cybersecurity industry.

Work is certainly keeping me going during this pandemic. Amid physical distancing, there’s extra time to reflect on the last couple years.

I’ll talk more about the family business another time. For now, some words about my main job.

Mood Music:

I’m fortunate to work in information security. I get to do my part, however small, in fulfilling several of society’s fundamental needs: keeping businesses running, keeping society safe from bad guys who would do us harm through our web-based tools and keeping people healthy.

In the past month, my company has released a lot of research on business continuity, protecting vital tech infrastructure from attackers looking to exploit our preoccupation with the pandemic. It’s also released research on helping medical institutions keep cyber threats at bay as they try to treat a growing influx of patients. Our content is usually for paying clients, but we’ve made all COVID-19 research publicly available.

The crisis adds fresh clarity to why I took this particular job two years ago.

I’ve always thrived on challenge, going for roles outside my comfort zone in a desire to push my personal evolution to the limit. I had a successful job as an infosec journalist but wanted experience actually doing the things I wrote about. That led me to Akamai Technologies, where I helped with incident response, in-house security training and development of a security research machine. I wanted to immerse myself in content marketing for a security vendor, so I went to Sophos, working with lab researchers to put their findings into writing. My current role at IANS returned me to familiar territory: I’m in an editorial director role, this time with security professionals who are members of our faculty.

This current role is probably the hardest, most rewarding I’ve ever had. I work directly with the company CEO — a career first — oversee development of a curriculum and work a lot more closely with clients than past roles allowed.

My mental wiring isn’t a natural fit for this work. But I’ve learned a ton and have certainly pushed my evolution to new heights. Through it all, I’ve been fortunate to be able to help people manage complex problems. I’m immensely grateful for that. Whatever this pandemic brings in the weeks ahead, I’m all in.

The more uncertain life gets, the harder I work. The more I see opportunities to help to society, the more I will double down.

I see enough people determined to do their part, whether they work in tech or as food-delivery drivers, medics or bankers, to know that society will get through this. We may even emerge on the other side better than we were. (I always try to be optimistic. I see no reason to stop now.)

No doubt there are many who aren’t as lucky and can’t lean on their work right now. My heart aches for everyone who lost their jobs at hotels, movie houses, restaurants, airlines, hair salons and other businesses forced to shut down as people shelter in place.

The fact that my industry isn’t so drastically affected (so far) means I’m simply going to work even harder. I simply must.

Thanks to those who make it possible for me to keep working, and thanks to those who continue to teach me new things along the way.

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Physical Distancing Doesn’t Mean Social Distancing

Amid the pandemic, we hear a lot about social distancing, which produces images of people isolated and alone, cut off from the world. The sound of it alone can bring on bouts of depression. What’s really happening is anything but — if you’re willing to use the tools available.

Mood Music:

On the work side, we may all be at home, but through GoTo Meeting, Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Facetime, my colleagues and I are getting a lot of time together. There are the meetings, of course, but a lot of us are also using these platforms to have lunch together and just banter:

Checking in with my colleague, Hillary Blair
Colleague Charlie Carey telling me, “Your humor is best when socially distanced.”

Some of my friends in the security industry have set up Zoom meetings and kept them running. Folks can come and go as they please.

My friend and former boss, Akamai CSO Andy Ellis, has used these tools for family dinners and spiritual gatherings. The following is posted with his permission:

In some respects, I think our extra efforts to socialize these days has been good for us. There’s a certain solidarity in all this.

I hope we don’t lose that when the pandemic ends.

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5 Examples of Humanity’s Best Amid COVID-19

The war footing we’re on with COVID-19 remains serious and will be for some time to come. We can’t let our guard down or return our lives to normal — whatever that was — for the time being.

But we can put the future into a better perspective. As harsh as life seems right now, there are myriad examples of humanity doing the right things and seeing measurable progress. Here are five of them.

Mood Music:

The First US Vaccine Test Has Happened

The first person in the US was injected with an experimental coronavirus vaccine Monday, leading the American charge in a global hunt for protection.

Antibodies from Recovered Patients Could Protect People at Risk

With a vaccine for COVID-19 still a long way from being realized, a Johns Hopkins immunologist is working to revive a century-old blood-derived treatment for use in the United States in hopes of slowing the spread of the disease. The treatment could be set up at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore within weeks.

SK Reports More Recoveries Than Coronavirus for First Time

South Korea reported more recoveries from the coronavirus than new infections on Friday for the first time since its outbreak emerged in January. The downward trend in daily cases raises hopes that Asia’s biggest epidemic center outside China may be slowing.

Uber Eats Waives Delivery Fees for 100,000 Restaurants

One of many, many examples of private enterprise stepping in to help everyone stay afloat — with full bellies.

Booze Makers Are Using Their Talents to Make Free Hand Sanitizer

Distilleries across America are stepping up to mitigate the shortage of hand sanitizer by making their own and giving it away. Another example of the best humanity has to offer.

Hang in there, folks. The helpers are out in full force.

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Finding Meaning in a COVID-19 War Footing

Each morning, as part of my job, I scan the big daily papers for cybersecurity news so we can put them into a digest to help chief security officers (CISOs) communicate the important stuff to top executives. This includes reading DealBook, a business-oriented newsletter from The New York Times. Reading it this morning brought out something I didn’t expect.

Mood Music:

This morning’s digest led with “What a ‘Wartime’ Economy Looks Like,” a rundown of all the actions the government and private sector are taking to approach the COVID-19 pandemic like a war. Said Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard economist and former Chief Economist for the International Monetary Fund:

The whole point of having a sound government balance sheet is to be able to go all out in situations like this, which is tantamount to a war.

Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Public Policy and Economics, Harvard University

Reading this energized me.

My reaction seemed odd at first, since the write-up was anything but a call to arms. It was just an emotionless rundown of information.

But this morning I awoke feeling grim. Right before bed the night before I had made the colossal mistake of ignoring my own advice of limiting news and social media intake. Erin chided me about it and I got snippy. Once you get sucked into a mounting pile of doom on the internet, pulling away is like trying to rip out a nail that’s gone through your foot.

So I met the dawn feeling that things were as bad as they could get, or that they were certainly headed that way.

Then I saw the DealBook article.

It didn’t convert my gloom into sunshine, but it reminded me of the larger purpose and how, to use the very old but still applicable cliché, we’re all in this together. This is indeed war, and we all have an opportunity to save lives and turn the tide of battle, even against a virus that couldn’t care less about borders, culture, creed, skin color or economic standing.

Social distancing sucks after a while. The damage to the global economy is going to suck in a multitude of ways. But all is not lost. We have much to gain, even if we have no clue what that is yet.

Rock on, fellow soldiers.

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I Haven’t Begun to Grieve

In recent months, I’ve had a sour attitude. My eating has been erratic, I’ve barely exercised or picked up the guitar, and I have far less patience for people than usual. I’ve come to realize the reason.

I haven’t really been dealing with the emotional scar of losing my father last year.

Mood music:

https://youtu.be/Dd4Uto-0XZg?list=RDDd4Uto-0XZg

I thought I was. I dove headfirst into the task of untangling his unfinished business interests, specifically managing the building that housed the family business for more than 40 years. It fell to me to manage the trusts associated with it, and there’s been a costly chemical spill cleanup to pay for and oversee.

After several failed attempts to sell the building, I decided to lease it out until the clean-up is done, fix the place up and then sell it in a few years. I brought someone in to manage the building for me, and we’re finally making some much-needed repairs.

Thankfully, I’ve been able to keep putting 100% into my real job, earning a “consistently exceeds expectations” on my last performance review. During the review period, I threw myself into a new role in the company while keeping vigil in my father’s hospice room, dealing with two other family deaths within the same three-week period and, as mentioned, taking the reigns of the Brenner business.

But some things have suffered. In addition to the lack of guitar playing, I haven’t been writing in this blog nearly as much as I should. I’ve been too busy and tired. And I’ve been neglecting other people. I’ve been carrying around a “fuck you” attitude that rivals that of my teens and early 20s, which is saying something.

For a long time, I thought all these things were the result of grieving for my father. But as I’ve heard other family members talk about their own grieving processes, I realize I simply threw myself into all that work, too overwhelmed with the responsibilities to have the luxury to grieve.

Funny that, given everything I’ve written about managing grief.

I’ve had far less empathy and patience for other family members. I think some of that is because I’m jealous of their ability to grieve. I haven’t been able to do any personal travels to contemplate the last year. I haven’t been able to drop a single tear.

Some of it is because I can’t put him on a pedestal the way they can. I’ve spent a lot of time being angry and resentful of the old man for dumping this mess on my shoulders.

To keep doing my real job with all the time and energy it deserves while keeping a closer eye on the building, I moved into my father’s office. His fishing pictures, hanging stuffed sailfish and scattered piles of paperwork have been replaced with my own family portraits and some guitar- and movie-oriented wall hangings. The filing cabinets have an increasing array of stickers about hacking, a nod to my work in infosec.

Sometimes I sit there and remember hanging out in this office as he worked, and it makes me a little sad. It definitely makes me think of the strange turn my life has taken this past year. Never in a trillion years did I ever expect to be occupying that office for my own work.

The logical question is what I’m going to do to start grieving properly. Honestly, I’m not sure.

I know I have to start taking better care of myself. I have to start using my mental coping tools to their full power again. I know I need to start being more patient with people.

I’m still feeling things out in this journey. Maybe acknowledging the problem is the first step toward a solution.

The author at his father's desk

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When Sarcasm Is Mistaken as a Cry for Help

A couple weeks back I caused a bit of a stir on Facebook with this comment:

Many times this past year, I’ve questioned how the hell it is that I’m still sober, given all the dramatic challenges I’ve faced. Today is one of those days.

I got a ton of comments from people offering advice, sympathy and everything in between. I was partly grateful because it showed a lot of people give a shit about me. But the thing is, I wasn’t really in need of it.

Therein lies one of the tricky parts of being on Facebook: Sometimes you make a comment that doesn’t warrant much analysis, but people take it as something different entirely.

Mood music:

That day, it seemed like everyone I talked to was suffering from various levels of butthurt. So I made that comment.

It was partly in jest, kind of like the dude in Airplane who picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue. But part of it was also amazement that some of the past year’s pressures hasn’t driven me back to the bottle. It was something for me to be proud of, not bucked up for.

The pressure I speak of is unfinished family business that landed on me since my father’s death last year.

I’ve mostly gotten control of it all, and thankfully none of it has affected my workmanship in my real job. At this point, there’s no chance of that happening. I’ve been through the worst of it and have that part of my life in its proper box. The me of 12 years ago would have broken, and I see the past year as a measure of how far I’ve come.

But there are still days where I would like to swing a sturdy bat around in frustration. That doesn’t mean I’m ready to fall off the wagon. It just means I’m like all of you:

I have happy fun days and I have irritating days.

Thanks to everyone for the concern. But don’t worry about me.

“Bugs Bunny Nervous Break Down” by spongefox on DeviantArt

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Dear Prudence, I’m Coming For You

By the end of 2015, I made a decision: I wasn’t going to let newfound pressures and responsibilities overtake the most important things in my life. Managing the loose ends of a family business — a task I inherited when my father died in June — had done just that. It was time to stop. I asked a friend for advice, and he told me to practice prudence.

Prudence is about using reason to govern oneself. In my case, prudence means putting the added responsibilities in their proper place, behind the things that are more important, specifically my wife and children and my career.

Indeed, 2015 was about doing the best I could with the added pressures. I think I did OK, for the simple reason that I still have a pulse and can stand up. I was able to keep doing my day job well. I can’t say I would have achieved the same results if this all happened a decade ago.

But 2016 is going to be about taking my life back.

The need to do that came into clearer focus last night. I went to a wake for a mentor from my North Shore Community College days and ran into several people who were part of that circle 25 years ago. We talked about what we were up to these days and the twists and turns our lives had taken. It reminded me of how hard I’ve worked since then to get to where I am now. If I turn my back now, I’ll be putting all those years to waste. I’m not going to let that happen.

I’m not tossing the new responsibilities aside, however. But from here on out, they’re taking a backseat to my real work.

Reset Button

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When Life Changes, So Do Your Coping Tools

I used to post in this blog at least once a day. Now I struggle to write a couple times a week. What’s going on?

Mood music:

When I started this blog, I was writing one or more posts a day, almost every day. Then it was four times a week. Then it was three. Lately, I have a hard time finding the motivation to write.

It’s odd, because writing has long been my most important coping tool for navigating life.

It’s not writer’s block or a lack of ideas. I have a backlog of topics I wrote down some time ago. I’m realizing that the problem — if it can be considered a problem — is that the contours of my life have changed, requiring me to rethink my coping tools and how best to use them.

I’ve experienced big changes in my life these last few months. Three people who were each a major force in my life passed on, and I found myself responsible for cleaning up and selling the family business. And in the last two years, the nature of my work has changed.

As a result, all my tools — the guitar playing, writing, breathing exercises, prayer, and so on — are in flux. I still use them, but the amount of each is changing.

Especially the writing.

My love for writing is as strong as it’s ever been. But as the busyness of my days has crowded out the time for it, I’ve realized that the world isn’t going to end when I don’t produce for this space. I don’t need to type a post every day for writing to be a critical tool.

It’s also true that a lot of my writing time has shifted to work projects. I’m working on the kind of research, intelligence gathering and report writing I’ve long wanted to do. But it’s a more demanding kind of writing, so I’ve shifted a lot of my strength and discipline there.

The family business stuff is something else entirely. It sucks up a lot of time and there are many moving parts. I’ve been learning a lot about the law, real estate, environmental remediation and insurance.

I also need to do my best for the family, and it’s become necessary to cut some of the writing time I used to have.

I don’t have a plan yet outlining the new order of things. My breathing exercises and praying is pretty much unchanged, I still see the therapist every other week and I take my meds on schedule. The guitar playing and personal blogging are moving targets. Some weeks I play a lot, other weeks hardly at all.
The writing has been even less predictable. For now, I’m scheduling posts for Monday, Wednesday and Friday each week.

All this will sort itself out and before long I’ll have a new tool-using structure that works for this new world I find myself in.

In the meantime, if you don’t see me posting, don’t worry. I’m fine — even better than fine.

I’m just busy living.

Spectre of the Past by EddieTheYeti

“Spectre of the Past” by EddieTheYeti

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The Boy Inside the Man: An Inspirational Story

This blog is my personal tale. That it helps some people because they can relate to it was an unexpected bonus that I try to live up to. As part of that I will share personal tales from other people that have taught me a lot. The latest example is “Being ‘Whole’ Isn’t My Goal” by Paul Nobles.

I don’t know Nobles personally, but the man captures things I relate to.

He writes of things that happened in childhood that confused him and fostered a lot of anger as a young man. He writes of an invisible hole inside him that he could never fill. He writes of how food filled the hole after he put down the drugs and alcohol. He writes of using exercise as a crutch.

At one point he says:

Inside me is a little boy sitting on a couch with police surrounding me asking if I’m alright and that answer is, ‘No, I am not alright.’ I will never be ALL RIGHT but I am working on that.

Everyone has a story. Please read his.

Survival Book in the Jungle

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Just Admit You Were Wrong

When you passionately push opinions, it sucks to be proven wrong later. It’s happened to me plenty of times, and I’ve learned to simply correct the record as I go. Doing so keeps me honest.

What follows are posts I’ve done here and in my work-related blogs when I’ve had a change of heart.

The lesson: When you’re wrong, just admit it. It’s the right thing to do, and it will keep your credibility intact.

“The Women at RSA Conference 2015“
A couple years ago I suggested that renowned writer Violet Blue had no business speaking at BSidesSF because she wasn’t a security practitioner and this was a security conference. As I got to know her work better over time, I realized she did indeed bring something to the table.

“Revisiting My Earlier Argument About Security Curmudgeons“
In May 2011, while writing the Salted Hash blog for CSOonline, I wrote a post called “Take the Word Curmudgeon and Shove It.” I took aim at those in the industry who pride themselves on being cynical and suggested that they cut the vitriol. I still see this as a problem, but back then I painted the community with too wide a brush.

“I Was Wrong About Lance Armstrong“
When Lance Armstrong was first accused of doping, I defended him. I saw someone who had overcome cancer to rise to the top of his game, so I argued that he didn’t deserve to be stripped of his seven Tour de France titles. Time and additional evidence proved me wrong, so I said so.

“The Danger of False Memories“
I didn’t own up to any specific misjudgment in this post. But I did note that in a semi-autobiographical blog, it’s easy to mis-remember the past.

“Spectre of the Past” by EddieTheYeti