New Year, Same me for the most part - 05/01/26#

It’s that time again, but a first for the site. 2025 has come to a close and 2026 is here, promising the same stuff as 2025 but I’m slightly older. As I’m still in recovery mode from New Year’s and Christmas, I’m going to hold off on doing anything that requires too much brain power for the next couple of weeks and instead talk about the plans and goals that I have for the year ahead. To start, let’s reflect on 2025 for a brief moment. This was the year that the majority of my university graduate apprenticeship took place in and meant that I spent a lot of time working on that and learning/re-learning topics from when I was in uni 6 years ago. I also had my first full year working within Cybersecurity and decided to take some of my learning and personal development more seriously. And in 2026, this goal is not really going to change a massive amount, and I want to highlight my 4 main goals that I am looking to achieve by the end of the year.

1. Finish Uni#

The first goal that I have, which is probably pretty obvious, is to finish my master’s degree. The final submission date for my dissertation (my last bit of work) is at the tail end of April, so I will probably be spending the majority of the beginning of this year working on that and making sure that I never have to do any form of higher education ever again, as I feel it wasn’t really my smartest decision to go back into it. In hindsight, I wish that I had predominantly focused on certifications and self-oriented learning, in which I could focus on topics that were more interesting to me personally and provide me more benefit in my employment. However, it isn’t like I learned absolutely nothing in my time doing it; I just re-hashed a lot of topics that I had covered in the past or felt like they were not of much use to me. My dissertation isn’t in a bad state currently, I have typed up a good quarter of it and am focusing on the deliverable for my report, a learning management platform that makes use of gamified concepts to promote cybersecurity learning. My hope is that by the end of this month, I will have completed the bulk of the development of the courses and well into my testing for a full and proper launch mid-February. Unfortunately, as this is being used at my job, I most likely won’t share too much about it until a later date but might provide small updates as we go. Once that is done and in the test subjects’ hands, I’ll be focusing on typing up results/findings and conclusions to make up the majority of the rest of my word count.

2. Learn some more#

My second goal will come into play in the latter half of the year once I’ve finished my first and have had suitable time in between to allow my little brain to rest and recuperate. This will be to enroll myself into online learning platforms like HackTheBox or TryHackMe to start my learning journey into more focused topics that I can pick and choose to provide me more satisfaction. I’ve used these sites in the past but purely on the free courses and found that I liked the way that they taught the content and want to try out the full paid offering to see what the paywalled content is like and whether I feel it’s the right way to go for me. It’s something that I always find so weird about myself in that I will happily spend ££ on getting myself something stupid, but when it comes to self-improvement, the £15 a month seems to be exorbitant prices. I want to dispel that kind of notion and “invest in myself”, gross. I did also consider buying books on topics that I found interesting but think that it might not work too well with how I learn, which is very much a bash my head against it until it makes sense or I can’t see straight. Again, this will most likely be in the latter half of the year, post-summer holidays, but when I do get round to starting this, I will most likely put write-ups of the exercises that I work through onto my site to let me look back on what I’ve done and track my progress as I think it will be interesting. So, if that sounds up your alley, then stick a reminder in for 6 months’ time and yell at me if I haven’t done anything about it yet.

3. Less gamey, more something else instead#

My third goal is a lot less career/interest-oriented but more a personal improvement that I feel like putting down in writing makes me have more of a sense of attachment to. It also ties in slightly to goal two in that I want to spend a little less time playing games and instead spend some of that time on being a bit more present and focused. Now, I’m not saying that I want to stop entirely, as it is very much a stress reliever for me and is a completely valid escape mechanism that I get a great amount of value out of, I just think sometimes I overdo it a tad. As I inch ever closer to 30 (I’ll be 28 this year, yikes), I know that I will marry my fiancé and no doubt start looking to begin our little family past our two little cats that we have currently (shout out Billie and Pebbles). I want to make sure that I am present in the time that I have with all the important people in my life as well as spend more time working on myself, and if that means giving up an hour of World of Warcraft every now and then, I need to make a more conscious effort to do so. I think goal two will help with this goal in a nice way, but I also want to make sure that I try and step away from the screen during this time too. I’ve been reading more the past year than I have in a good 10 years or so, which has been a really appreciated alternative that I plan to keep on doing in this vein too. This will probably be one that I won’t expand on much more than this initial post on this site, as I don’t think anyone other than me and my partner will really care to know how I’m getting on with it, but just know that I’m doing my best!

4. Learn something practical#

The last goal that I had written down from my moment of goal-writing madness this morning was that I wanted to also learn a more practical skill. One of the many things that amazed me about my dad was that no matter what needed to be done, to make something work or fit or anything like that, he would always know what to do and would be able to figure out how to do it. With the idea of having my own kids in the future, I also want to have that same ability to hopefully wow them with too. So I want to learn something practical and useful, something like woodworking, soldering, or some basic electrical concepts to help with either DIY or fun projects around the house. I mentioned this to my fiancé whilst typing this evening, and she has signed me up for building shelves with her dad in Poland in the summer, so I guess I’m a little railroaded for this one for the time being. Personally, I think soldering is a fun one and can also tie in with ethical hacking concepts in the form of hardware hacking. I’ve been watching a guy on YouTube with really interesting videos that I think maybe planted this goal idea in my head (Benn Jordan for anyone interested) as well. He has some really good videos talking about flock “safety” cameras across the US that are a very interesting watch if you are so inclined. To bring it back around, I think this will be more similar to goal 3 than the initial 2 in the sense that it might not feature too heavily on this site depending on what I end up attempting but might open an avenue for some less technical write-ups and blog posts in another section of my site if there is any interest in the future.

With all that being said, I hope the holiday season has treated your heart nicely and your waistline horribly, as mine has, and best of luck in 2026!

Jack