Progress, the plan, and 10K

We are near the end of the year now, and it's time to start looking back at what we've done, and what a year. I'm not doing the Bilan today as I'm waiting for the end, but I'm thinking about what to do next.

I also attended my last 10K race of the year, which was amazing.

Progress

My main issue with my work now is that I'm definitely not making progress, especially in the Bug Bounty field. I know how to make money, how to find bugs, but I'm still stuck looking for the same vulnerabilities again and again; it's frustrating.

What is the cause? Not learning enough, not doing CTF enough, not doing R&D enough. Why ? Cause I don't take ( have ? ) the time to do it. Simply cause I'm always looking for new bugs to get cash again and again, and it's not the best way to do it, honestly. You feel stressed about money, and you don't take the time to work on stuff that you really want to. But it's totally ok, and I choose to do it, like spending most of my money on an expensive rent in Paris and on travelling all around the world every time, which is totally amazing and worth it.

But now, I want to change this specific part and take the time to come back to what really matters and expand my skills, which will be the biggest goal of 2026. So how can I take time doing it?

The plan

It's not totally defined, but in my head it's like that. I'm not doing any big trip until the end of the year, and I'll stop spending my money on useless stuff.

Also, I really want to not depend only on Bug Bounty for my living, so finding something else can be nice. The most beautiful option for me is to continue working hard on Hackyx and releasing the next version, which is still cooking on the dev part. But it can be something else, still thinking about it, maybe doing more pentests during the year.

This way, I will see Bug Hunting not as the only way to make money, but more as a fun part to discover bigger bugs and take the time to explore bigger targets.

I also discussed with a friend about some possibilities, and I told him that I'm always lazy when it comes to working on my side projects, even if I know that it can be rewarding in the long run. And he told me that I needed to hurt myself a bit, and to force me to do it, whatever I think. Which is definitely true. And it's already something I'm doing with running. Most of the time, I don't want to go out running when it's raining or cold outside, but I'm doing it because I have a plan and I need to follow it, no matter what.

So here is something I'm going to try in the next weeks. Forcing myself to work on stuff that really matters and stop procrastinating. I will try doing things like :

• 1 day working on Hackyx
• 1 day for R&D
• 1 day for writing stuff like this blog and other stuff
• 1 day to learn and do more CTFs
• and 3 days doing Bug Bounty

It's not especially full days, but just to give me, it will maybe be more or less, I will see. And I think most of us don't want to hurt ourselves, and it's totally normal, but sometimes, it helps a lot.

I know that I can just take a normal pentest job as a full-time job and do bug hunting on the side, and other projects. But I really enjoy my freedom doing what I want, and depending mostly on myself, it's very rewarding. And just by looking at most people on the subway at 9 am, I don't want this life.

10K race

I did the last race of the year a few days ago. And that was amazing. With my coach, we weren't very confident, to be honest, as the past few weeks were quite bad for me in running. Mostly because my sleep wasn't very good, and I travelled a lot, so it wasn't easy to mix everything.

The goal was to finally reach a sub-45 mins on the 10K, which means 4:30/km ( 8.33 mph ). The conditions were very bad; it was raining a lot, so it was hard to be motivated to do it. But fuck it, don't give yourself the choice.

And finally, it was amazing, I was flying and beat my previous record, and I was faster than the initial plan. I ended up accelerating in the last 3km, which is crazy on a 10K, so I'm more than happy about it.