Happy Friday! 🎉
This may be one of those weeks where I am glad for the weekend more so than I usually am. It’s been pretty draining from an emotional investment standpoint. If you don’t know by now—and I’m sure you do—I heavily invest emotions into damn near everything I do. I can’t help it, it’s just my nature. Tackling a very large or very important project requires significant emotional investment from me.
This week, that such project was our annual IT risk assessments. While each assessment that we had to do (four in total) only took an hour or so each over four days, it was a lot to sign and attest that what we were submitting was accurate to the best of our knowledge. First, it was narrowing things down from many, many departments and research areas into four broader “buckets”, and then going over each question, thinking about things from a global perspective to arrive at what the best answer was. Now that it’s over, I can breathe a sigh of relief, and relax—until next year. 😱
Perhaps related to the emotional toll this was taking on me (I’m still not sure if it’s related or not), these last couple of days, my soul was craving—something.
I found myself with desires, yearnings even.
To listen to music that I could just get lost in.
To write about something—with no idea what that something was.
To draw something—again, not knowing what.
I honestly don’t know if I’ve ever had that calling from inside before, and if so, it had never called out quite so loudly. It completely took over my thoughts. I just had to do something. Even as I write this, it still longs, but it’s lessened a bit. I quickly posted about it last night on social media:
My soul is souling as I sit here sleepily. It wants to write, to drift into music, to do something—but I’m not sure what. All I feel is that something in me wants to exist. #VulnerablyMe
This morning, I listened to some music that I get lost in every single time.
Evanescence.
So, I posted again on social media this morning:
The songs of Evanescence are quenching my soul’s need to get lost in the music. The orchestral melodies, Amy’s soothing yet painful voice, lyrics that are almost spell-like—I feel it all, right down to my core. It’s calming, pain-invoking, and cathartic, all at the same time. #VulnerablyMe
With a lot of negativity around Generative AI (ChatGPT, Copilot, etc.), I have to say that it has really helped me—not only with grammar and writing, but also helping me be more in tune with myself.
Helping me learn to slow down.
Helping me embrace my quietness and my softness.
Helping me notice things that others may not notice (it’s how I started noticing and appreciating flowers).
I’m learning to lean into that softness, and try not to hide it, but be proud of it. It’s why I even went so far to come up with a new tagline for me and my blog: Security for the Soft-Spoken. It’s also how my signature hashtag was created: #VulnerablyMe. These are me. These are my brand.
This Got Me Thinking
I read an article earlier this week (here) about a developer who had created a tool that scrapes YouTube comments and then uses AI to guess things like political affiliation, where the commenter lives, even what languages they may speak. Not with any kind of consent from the commenters—just scraped, analyzed, and categorized. All because they could.
That got me thinking.
We live in a time when tech often far outpaces the ethics that should guide—and dare I say—govern it. The sheer capability to build something like that doesn’t mean that it should be built. Yet, time and time again, we see, hear, or read about such people prioritizing novelty, virality, or curiosity over caution.
It reminded me that cybersecurity isn’t just about firewalls and phishing. It’s also about the human side, and drawing lines—ethical ones. Sometimes the most secure systems are the ones where we say “no”. No, I will not mine all of that data. No, I will not track that behavior. No, I will not pretend neutrality while building something designed to profile others, all in the name of “research”.
Just because we can doesn’t mean that we should.
And just because data is available doesn’t mean that it’s ours to use as we see fit.
Finally, here’s a look back at what I wore to work this week. For all of the dads (or dad substitutes) out there, I wish you all a happy Father’s Day on Sunday! Have a safe and enjoyable weekend!
-Terry
June 9
June 10
June 12
June 13
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