{
  "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1",
  "title": "lizzie.coffee",
  "home_page_url": "blog.lizzie.coffee",
  "feed_url": "blog.lizzie.coffee/tag-burnout.json",
  "description": "My Blog and Notes",
  "items": [
    {
      "id": "blog.lizzie.coffee/a-trip-to-london.html",
      "url": "blog.lizzie.coffee/a-trip-to-london.html",
      "title": "A Trip to London",
      "content_html": "<!-- Content Injected to every content markdown header -->\n<p>I recently went to fwd:cloudsec 2026 which was hosted in London. I took my Canon EOS 6D with me. It has a 34-102mm lens whichmakes it really great for a beginner.</p>\n<p>This time I tried to focus on creating a narrative with words I saw in the city and then the images I took. I also tried to edit them less in Darktable, opting mostly for the &quot;local contrast&quot; and &quot;shadows and highlights&quot; settings. I didn't really play with the color balance which is what I used for previous photos of Utrecht on a rainy day (3000k WB) and a park during the summer (5800K WB). I still need to upload those.</p>\n<p>Anyways, here's my first album.</p>\n<!-- .gallery path=london width=800 height=600 -->\n<!-- Content Injected to every content markdown footer -->\n<p>I hope this post was helpful, or at the very least, interesting.\n<meta name=\"fediverse:creator\" content=\"@morattisec@infosec.exchange\"></p>\n",
      "summary": "\"I went to London last week to go to a security conference. Then I looked around.\"",
      "date_published": "2026-09-10T00:00:00-00:00",
      "image": "",
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "lizzie",
          "url": "https://lizzie.coffee",
          "avatar": "https://gitlab.com/uploads/-/system/user/avatar/23408145/avatar.png"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "photography",
        "burnout",
        "thoughts",
        "mastodon",
        "london"
      ],
      "language": "en"
    },
    {
      "id": "blog.lizzie.coffee/where-have-i-been.html",
      "url": "blog.lizzie.coffee/where-have-i-been.html",
      "title": "Where have I been?",
      "content_html": "<!-- Content Injected to every content markdown header -->\n<h1><a href=\"#one-year-at-a-time\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"anchor\" id=\"one-year-at-a-time\"></a>One year at a time</h1>\n<p><figure><img src=\"media/IMG_7318.jpg\" alt=\"Photo\" /></figure></p>\n<p>It's been awhile since I've sat down with the intent to write something for my blog. Originally, I wrote only about tech and specifically cloud security. My blog was something that I saw as a way to explore and hopefully attract people in the same special interest as myself.</p>\n<p>Since then, a lot has changed. When I first explored cloud security I loved the idea of scale. How big of an impact one change could make felt powerful and interesting. Working with thousands of resources, hundreds of services, and interconnected complex distributed systems. It was something that I felt I could happily keep learning about how it all worked. I was working in offensive security and surrounded by people who it felt like I could ask and learn almost anything about computing. Now, I can't decide if even like it still. My feelings seem to flip-flop every day.</p>\n<p>The only thing is that the company I had been working for... kind of fell off. Slowly, all the deeply passionate people left. People were burning out on consulting or security every other day. The company clearly was not healthy and probably had tried to grow too fast. This last year that old company was sold for basically parts or something. Also the CEO appeared in &quot;those redacted files&quot; with an email exchange and meetings. That was a bit of a mindfuck, to be honest. and the former coworkers and I felt similarly disgusted by it. The same CEO also had been rather nice and favorable to me before which makes me feel even grosser. Now I left that company and I also left behind offensive security to go work at a well-known opensource git forge that starting drinking the AI hype juice a bit too hard for my liking.</p>\n<h2><a href=\"#moving-on\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"anchor\" id=\"moving-on\"></a>Moving (on)</h2>\n<p><figure><img src=\"media/IMG_7243.jpg\" alt=\"Photo\" /></figure></p>\n<p>I also moved to a different country on a highly skilled migrant visa sponsored by the new company I joined. So now, I live in the Netherlands. I have healthcare which is NOT tied to my place of employment. I can take sick days to deal with a chronic illness that I have. I don't hear random gunshots in the city or worry about the police. In the last months of being in the U.S. I had an AirBNB while selling everything everything I couldn't fit into one of 6 suitcases. Every day we heard the national anthem and the Navy base doing test alarms. It was dystopian to say the least. I also got married to my now wife. It was rushed partly because we had been talking about it for a year and then partly because we didn't want an executive order to make it impossible for us to be married.</p>\n<p>The immigration process happened in about 4 months. We started in February and arrived about 4 months later. If you don't need to rush an immigration, I would recommend taking a longer time to make it happen. We had 4 housing contracts fall through and plenty of logistics. Having just sold basically everything we owned meant we had to rebuy basically everything except the graphics cards and clothes we packed.</p>\n<p><figure><img src=\"media/IMG_7340.jpg\" alt=\"Photo\" /></figure></p>\n<p>We just didn't want to be a queer couple in the U.S. when we had the means to keep ourselves safe elsewhere. We definitely weren't the only other people doing it either judging by how many people were getting their documents Apostille'd alongside us. Also the coworkers and friends who DM me occasionally asking for help on the process of moving.</p>\n<p>I left behind family, lifelong friends, and an entire professional network I had spent years actively cultivating. Being +9 hours away from all of them sucks, but I've been lucky enough to meet some incredible people that I'm proud to have in my life.</p>\n<h2><a href=\"#the-rise-of-ai-and-layoffs\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"anchor\" id=\"the-rise-of-ai-and-layoffs\"></a>The rise of AI and layoffs</h2>\n<p>God, I miss the days where I didn't have a mandate to use AI tools at work. The entire field feels like it's being bent and broken by big tech.</p>\n<p>I am in the Netherlands on a work visa so I don't really have the option to just quit on moral grounds. Even though, that's exactly what the company I'm working tried to encourage with a weird twitter-fork-in-the-road thing where they announced you can leave if you want to but in a month layoffs were coming. Turns out, that offer wasn't legal in the Netherlands and for other work-council reasons (for U.S'ers that's similar to a union but with actual teeth) it's been almost 5 months and WE STILL don't know who in the Netherlands has been layed off. So that still might include me. Still, that is so much better than the U.S. coworkers who had no protections. They were just let go in June. Some entire countries were let go too. Internally, it's been some of the worst mismanagement I've seen and that saying something since I come from a startup background where praying your CEO doesn't say something weird is a daily unsuccessful ritual.</p>\n<p>I have no intentions of moving back to the U.S. (ever) and so I've prepared more than a few emergency visa backup scenarios to deploy in case of unemployment.</p>\n<p><figure><img src=\"media/IMG_7428.jpg\" alt=\"Photo\" /></figure></p>\n<p>With all that being said, tech has become by FAR the most stressful piece of my life. It feels like everyday there's a new way it's oppressing societies or yet another sociopath got enough funding for a terrible idea. Being tech literate is a blessing but also a curse at the moment.</p>\n<p>Being excited about cloud is difficult now because I see the Cloud Act risk everywhere. Being excited about AI is a joke because I've watched former coworkers deskill themselves in front of me and or I could point to literally any of the the well cited &quot;this is a horrible fucking idea&quot;. I don't have anything against the math behind it, that shit is pretty cool honestly, but holy shit why couldn't we as an industry get fucking hyped about something like creating a proper inventory of assets and training juniors.</p>\n<p>Now what excites me most about tech is old analog things and then &quot;digital sovereign&quot; things. It's a shame that doesn't really hire that well at the moment if you are an immigrant from the country that's wielding tech like a weapon and you don't want them in your systems. The cloud stuff that I will probably be focusing on in the future is U.S. decoupled infrastructure like OpenStack or similar. I've been leaning into Linux and selfhosting to upskill in ways that my work won't support. If you're doing that type of work in the Netherlands please reach out so we can be friends.</p>\n<p><figure><img src=\"media/IMG_7400.jpg\" alt=\"Photo\" /></figure></p>\n<p>Honestly, there's a really good chance that I am burnt out and I need to recover before I do that.</p>\n<h2><a href=\"#destressing\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"anchor\" id=\"destressing\"></a>Destressing</h2>\n<p>I've been desperately looking for ways to disconnect from big tech. My therapist says I should be looking for things that make me feel better and more in control, and I'm inclined to believe them that's a good idea.</p>\n<p>These are the types of things I've been up to:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>I've started learning Piano/keyboard thanks to a girlfriend of mine.</li>\n<li>I've started taking photos with a DSLR camera gifted to me by another girlfriend of mine and then editing them with OpenSource software. They are on this blogpost even.</li>\n<li>I've ripped Windows, Microsoft, Netflix, and Google almost entirely out of my life where I can</li>\n<li>I've started a NixOS homelab hosting a Nextcloud, Garage S3 Buckets (georeplicated with my girlfriends homelab), Email, and now an Owncast server</li>\n<li>Playing Star Wars games :)</li>\n<li>I've been touching grass and learning Dutch (A2, btw). I'm debating trying to blog in Dutch too to help me learn faster.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>So those are the things I'll be continue blog about moving forward because they interest me. I understand if that's not something that is interesting or if you feel that AI is the future and everyone needs to get onboard (I disagree).</p>\n<p>However, that is not what I care about and I cannot pretend I do.</p>\n<p><figure><img src=\"media/IMG_7399.jpg\" alt=\"Photo\" /></figure></p>\n<p>email: <a href=\"mailto:me@lizzie.coffee\">me@lizzie.coffee</a>\nsocial media: <a href=\"https://infosec.exchange/@morattisec\">@morattisec@infosec.exchange</a></p>\n<p>As always,</p>\n<!-- Content Injected to every content markdown footer -->\n<p>I hope this post was helpful, or at the very least, interesting.\n<meta name=\"fediverse:creator\" content=\"@morattisec@infosec.exchange\"></p>\n",
      "summary": "\"Some thoughts on ai, burnout, and immigrating. Also what I'll blog about\"",
      "date_published": "2026-08-27T00:00:00-00:00",
      "image": "media/IMG_7318.jpg",
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "lizzie",
          "url": "https://lizzie.coffee",
          "avatar": "https://gitlab.com/uploads/-/system/user/avatar/23408145/avatar.png"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "cloudsec",
        "burnout",
        "ai",
        "thoughts",
        "mastodon",
        "immigration"
      ],
      "language": "en"
    }
  ]
}