How I wrote two commercially published books and passed my CISSP exam in the same year
And I still managed to enjoy some goofing off! Goofing off is good for your health.
As I write this, it’s December 8th and the Gregorian calendar year 2023 is almost over.
It’s blatantly obvious to me and many other people that human civilization, at least as we know it, is going down the tubes.
Content warning: There’s some dark stuff here related to war and domestic violence.
The US government is giving the IDF billions upon billions upon billions of dollars to completely destroy every Palestinian in the Gaza Strip. Probably the only Palestinians who will survive are those who live far away from Palestine. I’m thinking of people like Mohamed Hadid, father of glamorous fashion models Bella and Gigi Hadid, and a real estate developer for the ultra wealthy in Bel Air and Beverly Hills. His family had the money and connections to immigrate to the United States shortly after he was born. And he just got wealthier and more powerful from there. Any Palestinian with the financial means to do so has left Palestine (considered by imperialists to be part of Israel) decades ago. So all the Palestinians who are being destroyed in the current genocide are the poorest of the poor.
Many people started to notice our worsening climate disaster this past summer as massive country-sized fires and abnormally hot temperatures impacted much of the northern hemisphere-- multiple continents. The ultra wealthy aren’t stopping carbon emissions. They’re going full stream ahead, aided and abetted by the same evil that leads the US and Canada, the Biden and Trudeau governments and Biden and Trudeau themselves. “Carbon credits” are the big scam they’re trying to fool us with.
Here’s an analogy that describes how “carbon credits” work. Imagine that polluting the Earth is a man beating his wife, and carbon credits are small boxes of jewellery and chocolates.
Man beats the hell out of his wife, once again. Her lip is bleeding and she has a black eye.
The next day comes. “Hey honey, I’m sorry that I let my temper get the best of me. Look, here’s a box of Lindt truffles! Your favourites! See, I just cancelled out the harm I did yesterday. I’m a great husband.”
And that’s how “carbon credits” work. So we’re fucking doomed. I’m just fortunate to live on the shore of Lake Ontario in Toronto, where I have the world’s largest freshwater reserve (the Great Lakes collectively) in my backyard (almost literally) and the climate disaster doesn’t make this part of the world quite as unlivable as some other parts of the world. Florida is a total write off though.
Oh yeah, and all of our world leaders and “public health” departments have let a level three biohazard run rampant, destroying millions upon billions of people’s brains, hearts, and immune systems. And 99% of you are delighted to encourage your own destruction. If you don’t wear a good quality respirator in public at all times, I’m talking directly to you.
Anyway...
While staying safe, cozy, and 100% Covid free in my apartment, Crowgirl’s Skycave, I’ve had a pretty productive year.
I’ve done lots of day job work, writing lots of internal content and ghostwriting for a handful of smaller tech companies. That stuff is all pretty much about cybersecurity.
But my pride and joy is in the work that I do that I get credited for.
In 2023, I wrote two commercially published books, Hacker Culture: A to Z (O’Reilly Media), and Cloud Penetration Testing for Red Teamers (Packt). I also studied for my CISSP exam and passed it on my first try. Here’s how I managed to accomplish that.
I’m away from my apartment maybe an average of 30 minutes per week. Seriously. I’m blessed to have a work-from-home career, and I’m never going out into plague world for the fun of it. 99% of you aren’t wearing respirators in an ever worsening airborne pandemic. I can’t even relax in my top quality elastomeric respirator, seeing you plague rats horrifies me deep to my core. Fuck each and every one of you. You won’t see me except on the internet. I even bought exercise equipment so I can stay in my apartment without becoming sedentary. My condo building has lots and lots of communal gym facilities, but I’m not fucking safe there. The longest I’ve spent away from my home this year was when I was out in downtown Toronto for a few hours to write my CISSP exam. I resented that it’s not possible to write it online. And you’d better believe I kept my respirator on the entire time, except for the two seconds for the mandatory maskless ISC2 ID photo while holding my breath.
I have no kids. My dad managed to have me while being a novelist. But the instant I was old enough to play by myself, he taught me to “leave Daddy alone while he’s working.” My dad definitely spent more time writing novels than interacting with me. I have no kids at all, which means my life is even less encumbered by childcare than his was.
Now that it’s been over a month since my contract with cybersecurity research firm IOActive ended, I’ll say this. My work for them took me maybe three hours per week, and yet it gave me a livable income. Yeah, I’m incredibly fucking lucky. I know that’s not the reality of the average person.
I have ADHD. But instead of jumping through the abusive hoops I would need to jump through to keep getting my legally prescribed Concerta, I buy pseudoephedrine and sometimes I do illicit stimulants. On a mentally energized day, I can write 5,000 words or even more.
At least six days per week, I’m the only human being in the Skycave. My teddy bears and various other stuffed animals are great about giving me space and quiet to be productive.
I was raised by a compulsive professional writer, and I picked up his compulsive professional writing habits.
On my busiest weeks this year, I worked on Hacker Culture: A to Z, Cloud Penetration Testing for Red Teamers, and studied for my CISSP exam. A week this June might look something like this:
Monday: 6am-10am, social media doom scrolling, answer email, watch YouTube, eat breakfast. 10am-5pm, write Hacker Culture: A to Z. 5pm-6pm, eat supper and have a relaxing bath. 6pm-bedtime, read books for pleasure and play video games.
Tuesday: 6am-2pm, social media doom scrolling, answer email, watch YouTube, eat breakfast. 2pm, My romantic partner Jason comes over, pending a negative Cue Covid test. 5pm-6pm, eat supper and have a relaxing bath. 6pm-bedtime, read books for pleasure and play video games.
Wednesday: 6am-10am, social media doom scrolling, answer email, watch YouTube, eat breakfast. 10am-5pm, lay in bed while reading a few CISSP guides, do CISSP flash cards, and watch YouTube CISSP study videos. 5pm-6pm, eat supper and have a relaxing bath. 6pm-bedtime, read books for pleasure and play video games.
Thursday: 6am-10am, social media doom scrolling, answer email, watch YouTube, eat breakfast. 10am-5pm, write Hacker Culture: A to Z while concurrently writing something else for my day job. 5pm-6pm, eat supper and have a relaxing bath. 6pm-bedtime, read books for pleasure and play video games.
Friday: 6am-10am, social media doom scrolling, answer email, watch YouTube, eat breakfast. 10am-5pm, write Cloud Penetration Testing for Red Teamers. About four of those hours were spent doing frustrating vulnerability scanning things in my AWS instance over and over again, so I had a working tutorial for my book. 5pm-6pm, eat supper and have a relaxing bath. 6pm-bedtime, read books for pleasure and play video games.
Saturday: I’m tired of working! Let’s just play multiple video games all day. Switch in the morning, PC in the afternoon, and PS4 in the evening. Good riddance!
Sunday: CISSP studying in the morning, and video games on multiple platforms for the rest of the day until bedtime.
One thing that helped me grasp the CISSP curriculum pretty quickly is that it covers much of the cybersecurity concepts that I’ve spent years researching and writing about. Plus, my 2021 Wiley book 8 Steps to Better Security also covers a lot of CISSP concepts, rather accidentally. Because 8 Steps is all about the basics of business cybersecurity, and a CISSP is supposed to demonstrate that a person is qualified to run a business cybersecurity program.
So there you go. That’s how I do it. But even in my most hectic work weeks, I make sure to give myself some downtime. Being a workaholic will send you to an early grave. Don’t do that shit unless economic circumstances force you to juggle multiple jobs to pay your rent and buy food, okay?
Kim Crawley, buttondown.email/Crowgirl, @crowgirl.bsky.social, @crowgirl@hachyderm.io, linktr.ee/kimcrawley