One of the biggest changes for me personally this year has been that I moved across from a leadership position to one that was solely hands on keyboard technical work and I think it's been for the better for my professional and personal development.

I have also taken to getting out with my camera more and opted to take nice pictures of things and people in my free time which is one of the biggest life improvements.

One other thing that happened to me this year is I finally got shoulder surgery in my left shoulder and as I type this I am still recovering, I have a Labral Tear in both of my shoulders due to sustained injuries in martial arts over my life (getting old sucks!) if you're interested in what this means here's a better explanation than I'll ever be able to produce:

Something a few folks I have worked with historically have asked me is why I choose to do security in my 'downtime'. The answer isn't as simple as I initially hoped; while it likely isn't healthy, I find that I excel at the edge of burnout, so without actually burning out I enjoy having multiple projects on the go, be it building new tools, writing blog posts, writing my course or just general side quests.

With it I find that if I don't action the ideas I get I get a degree of idea paralysis leaving me having done nothing, therefore building lots of tools, writing lots of blog posts, writing additional side projects and tools and working on various projects in addition to my day job are weirdly what keep me sane.

To give you a bit of an insight into what it is I get up to, here are some of the things I've done this year:

• Written 17 blog posts (and published 15 blog posts, the other 2 aren't fully finished but are about 80-90% there):

• Written 20+ public tools (with a few more in the wings), I seem to continually be writing things as I keep having mad ideas!
  • Also working on my own Learning Management System to host my upcoming course, MAE with features to be expanded to support other courses (so watch this space if you want somewhere to host a course!)

• Written Malwareless Adversarial Emulation (MAE) Course (which is due to publish in Jan hopefully! You can get access here for pre-order and to be notified when it publishes.)
• Continue to chase the perfect framing with my cameras (https://photos.zsec.uk, you could argue that this gets me AFK and you'd be correct it does)
• Architect adversarial attack paths on Xintra's Lab environments
  • Worked on Meow lab this year and have another in the wings too
• Delivered 4 talks, SecuriTay, Steelcon, Hack Thursday and FalCon Europe
• All while juggling my day job and quietly building a pile of internal tools that make operations smoother, faster, and far less painful for everyone involved.

On top of the actual output, I ended up learning a fair bit about myself this year as well.

Creativity mainly photography and writing had a noticeable impact on my technical work. Getting outside with the camera or sitting down to write gave my head enough space to tackle problems properly.

Recovery from shoulder surgery also forced me to slow down and look after my health, which I’m notoriously bad at.

And the biggest realisation was that having multiple projects on the go isn’t burnout for me; it’s how I avoid it, I excel at the edge of burnout. If I only focus on one thing, I get stuck in idea paralysis, so keeping several threads moving is what keeps me balanced.

Stepping away from leadership surprised me more than anything in that I expected to miss the bigger-picture strategic work, instead I found myself far happier buried in technical projects again with a core focus on technical leadership. It brought back the curiosity I had earlier in my career and reminded me why I got into this field in the first place to hack together solutions and things, I'll still probably end up on the leadership track once again at some point but for now I'm happy writing cool things and adding to the community.

That said, shoulder rehab slowed me down more than I’d like. A few projects stalled because I tried to do too much at once. And I’m still terrible at knowing when to rest and insomnia still eats at my night productivity.

Onward to 2026, a few things I want to achieve:

• Ship the MAE course properly
• Publish more of the tools that currently live in private repos
• Keep improving my photography
• Mostly keep the balance between creativity, technical work, and actual recovery
• Call my friends more and actually speak to people rather than burry myself in my flat and surround myself with screens

Thanks to everyone who read my posts, played with the tools, came to my talks, or just encouraged my work.