Somewhere along the way, somewhere between Douglas Adams and a long-distance run at 5am, it all started making a strange kind of sense. Not complete sense — that would be boring. But the comfortable, productive kind of sense that comes from accepting that most important questions are worth living with rather than answering.
I'm Adam. I spend my working life in the world of cyber security — protecting things that matter, for organisations that can't afford to find out what happens when they don't. I've been doing this for over thirty years, across defence, policing, healthcare, banking, manufacturing, legal, and social care. I've worked on international projects, navigated complex regulatory landscapes, and advised organisations when the worst has already happened.
The job title says Principal Consultant and CISO. The reality is a little harder to compress.
Outside of work, I run. Not away from things — toward them, ideally. Long distances, early mornings, and an unhealthy relationship with elevation gain. Running, for me, is where a lot of the thinking happens. Problems that resist a desk tend to yield somewhere around kilometre 16.
I study philosophy — formally, in the sense of actually reading the books and arguing with them in the margins. Currently working through philosophy of science, which has the useful quality of making everything else feel both more and less certain simultaneously. I've previously studied philosophy of religion, which is a fascinating area when you're an atheist: you end up knowing a lot about something you don't believe in.
I travel when I can, and I travel badly — meaning I have no interest in the resort, the itinerary, or the well-trodden path. The places worth going to are usually the ones that require some explanation when you get back.
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" broke something open in a useful way. It was the first book I encountered that was genuinely funny about genuinely big things — the size of the universe, the absurdity of consciousness, the strange persistence of hope in the face of cosmological indifference. Adams understood that comedy and philosophy aren't opposites. They're the same conversation, conducted at different decibel levels.
That book led to astronomy. Astronomy led to physics. Physics led to philosophy. Philosophy led, eventually, back to the question of why we're asking any of this — which is either a sign of genuine intellectual progress or a very long loop. The answer, if there is one, is probably 42.
I also played Elite as a kid. The idea that you could point a ship at a star, hit the button, and go — that mattered. The universe as something to explore rather than observe from a safe distance. That instinct hasn't really gone away.
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