First of all: it feels great writing my first blog post. Not to get too ahead of myself, but it feels right. My name is Jesper Lundqvist and I have been hiding away from doing the “real” work for a long time now. But at some point, a day comes when you can not stand your own incompetence. I am taking responsibility for doing things right from now on. No more shortcuts, no more tl;dr’s or short-term comforts (in excess).
Three things:
I know what I want, why I want it and how I am going to get it.
Low Self-Image and Addiction
Now, before I begin, let me set the stage.
This is not the first time I begin “a new”.
Spoiler alert, I am like most people, not particularly special.
So, I did not get it right the first, second or even the nth time around.
To make this especially clear, here is a quick recap:
I was and am an insecure child. This is something I am working on to this day. However, it has gotten a lot better lately. (I am in my late 20’s now.) Breaking this life-draining cycle sufficiently is the prerequisite for this new beginning. However, this is not meant to turn into a pity party. Life is both good and bad. Deal with it properly. Do not let your life slip out of your hands. Whatever that means to you.
OK, enough life advice for now. Here comes the big three:
- What: Helping engineers write secure software.
- Why: To reduce suffering.
- How: By providing the best products and services, including education.
Visionary Tendencies
Now, it might seem audacious of me to think that I could even make the smallest of dents in cybersecurity. I must say I am also somewhat skeptical. However, I know myself pretty well up to this point. I know I am the most fulfilled when I am pursuing something out of reach. Because I know I am reaching here.
Or am I?
Except for the obvious fact that we never know how the story unfolds. I do think I have some things going for me. For starters, I am the person I want to help. I am the software engineer that does not know much about security, yet confronted by the topic more and more often. Also, I do not want my career to get boring and stale. Instead I want to enjoy every moment of it, which seems impossible when living on autopilot for 8 hours a day.
I want to create value, not siphon it—which, when done well, can be a beautiful art form in and of itself. Now that I think of it, wealth generation should be effortless. In the sense that when you are a master of value creation, you will not have any issue making money in the long run. Maybe you get fooled in the beginning, but when you come to your senses you are unstoppable.
And now it might seem like I am doing this to get rich.
Well, believe it or not money is not inherently bad. I want money, just like I want a lot of things in life. I want authentic and supportive friendships. I want my future wife and kids. I want a great inner world. I want belonging, etc. These are all great things to want. Do not let destructive thought patterns deny your life.
So, back to asking important questions: How can I help? What role can I play?
Recreating Identity
And, when I say “play a role”, I mean it in the most sincere way. We all have a persona. After all, we are all people. I am a person. You are a person. We all know these things. But why are we the people that we are? And, how can we change?
I believe working with these types of questions is crucial if you want to realize your vision. Let me illustrate this by using myself as an example. Let’s say I would stay in the low self-image and addiction cycle and try to realize my vision of helping engineers write secure software by providing products and services.
- The low self-image would stop me from doing many things, like communicating with potential clients. Why would someone listen to me?
- The addiction would rob me of time spent working on the products and services. Just one more game of Dota 2!
To me it is as clear as day. I named this post A new beginning because it is about starting from zero. Saying I do not know. I have to be reborn. To let go. It is not enough to just change your morning routine, switch jobs or start working out. All that old baggage of old habits is heavy, so it slows you down to the point where you are literally just spinning your wheels.
The only way forward is a factory reset.
There are no quick fixes.