I Never Said "Purple Teamer"
Nobody grows up saying they want to be a purple teamer. I said I wanted to be a hacker. Every single time someone asked what I wanted to do — hacker. No hesitation. No corporate-friendly rephrasing. Just the raw, unfiltered truth of a kid who saw the digital world as one giant puzzle begging to be solved.
I didn't know what purple teaming was. I didn't care about frameworks or compliance or vulnerability management lifecycles. I wanted to break things. I wanted to understand how systems whispered to each other when no one was listening.
Shooting Myself in the Foot
I dove headfirst into security before I had any business being there. No networking fundamentals. No understanding of how an OS actually works under the hood. Just raw curiosity and a dangerous amount of confidence.
It didn't take long to hit the wall.
I was trying to run before I could walk, and the ground let me know. Around middle school, I made a decision that probably saved my entire trajectory — I stepped back. Not out. Back. I realized there were fundamentals I was skipping, and those gaps would haunt me if I didn't fill them.
The Boring Stuff That Wasn't Boring
Here's the thing nobody tells you: the fundamentals are actually incredible.
Learning basic computing and networking — genuinely understanding how packets move, how DNS resolves, how subnets carve up address space — it was a blast. Even the most tedious subnetting labs hit different when you finally see the finished result click into place. There's something satisfying about the math just working.
I wasn't grinding through it to get to the fun part. It was the fun part. I just didn't know it yet.
Back in the Arena
High school is when things got real again. CTFs. TryHackMe pathways. Anything with the word "security" attached to it, I was there. Flags captured, boxes rooted, write-ups written at 2 AM with the screen burning my eyes.
By that point, I'd been saying "I'm going to be a hacker" for so long that the idea of doing anything else felt like betrayal. It wasn't a career choice anymore — it was identity. For better or worse, this was the path, and I was locked in.
The Help Desk
After high school, I landed on a help desk. No tier system. No escalation matrix. Just — handle it. Whatever the client needs, figure it out.
I thrived.
Tickets were getting smashed. Problems were getting solved. And that feeling — that feeling of I made it — hit me like a freight train. Everything I had worked toward my entire life, and here I was. Young. Hungry. In the field.
It wasn't a SOC. It wasn't a red team. But it was in. And being in meant I could move.
The Pivot
I got the opportunity to work with the internal security team, and I grabbed it with both hands. Shadowing. Learning. Contributing where I could. Absorbing everything like the infrastructure depended on it — because in a way, it did.
About a year and a half in, the promotion came. Cybersecurity Analyst. Official title. Official role.
But "analyst" barely scratches the surface of what the job actually is. I'm not just analyzing — I'm building, defending, testing, responding, automating. Jack of all trades, master of none. And honestly? I wouldn't have it any other way.
The Purple Truth
That's when the realization hit. I never aimed for purple teaming — I just naturally ended up there. Years of wanting to break things, combined with years of learning to build and defend them, fused into something that doesn't fit neatly into one box.
I think offensively. I build defensively. I live in the overlap.
Purple teamer.
Not because someone handed me the title. Because the path demanded it.
The Blessing and the Curse
This field has become my personality. I think in attack vectors at dinner. I mentally map network topologies in waiting rooms. I see a login page and my brain starts enumerating before I can stop it.
Blessing: I love what I do with every fiber of my being. The advancement of technology — AI, automation, cloud, edge, offensive tooling — all of it gives me a rush that nothing else comes close to.
Curse: it never turns off. The learning never stops. The imposter syndrome whispers even when you're performing. The field moves so fast that standing still feels like falling behind.
But I wouldn't trade it. Not for anything.
Just Getting Started
I'm still young. The career is still fresh. The certs are still stacking. The labs are still running. The void is still full of doors I haven't opened yet.
Everything up to this point has been the prologue.
Ya boi is just getting started.
— Void