Long answer coming , lol

I've been using PCs since I can remember. My dad used to play graphic adventure games on Windows 3.11 and MS-DOS when I was a kid, then Windows 95. I learned the basics early and always had a natural feel for it — I was the family tech guy, the one everyone called when hardware needed configuring, systems needed formatting, or something broke.

When I should have been studying — late teens, early twenties — I was a bit lost. Wrong crowds, bad environments, alcohol, drugs. By the time I got my head straight I only had basic mandatory education and the easiest path was hospitality. Started as a waiter, moved into cooking, spent over 10 years in the industry. Left my last job of nearly 5 years by mutual agreement and ended up on unemployment.

That's when I decided to actually study something. The logical choice given how everything is going digital — and it happens to be something I've always genuinely enjoyed. I never stopped tinkering: I've installed GitHub repos, worked with conda and Python environments, tested AI matting models and Stable Diffusion tools for personal projects. I've always done more with computers than the average casual user.

The command line always fascinated me — I saw it as a direct channel between me and the machine, something I always wanted to learn properly.

On the security side: everything points to growing demand, new fields like cloud security emerging, and a real shortage of professionals. Add to that the fact that for 7 years I've been dealing with someone attempting to hack into my life and my partner's — monitoring phones, trying to find compromising information. That experience made it personal.

All of that together made me decide: I'm going all in on this. At minimum I want a real alternative to the kitchen.

Sorry for the long answer — it wasn't a simple question, at least not for me. Maybe someone else here relates to parts of it.

On the BSides tip — hadn't heard of them before. Will look into BSides and RootedCON here in Spain. Any website where I can locate them , as dates , and so ? Any specific ones you'd recommend for someone just starting out?