aaron597.com
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- Written by: Aaron DeJong
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Career Milestones
I have six career milestones that I am working on as aims for my career. The six career milestones will include the CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure, GIAC Security Professional, CISSP, Certified Ethical Hacker, PMI-ACP and the CCISO. These certifications will define my career and future business prospects. There are some other specialties that I will want to do as well regarding Cloud Networking, Network Security, Network Defense and Network Penetration Testing.
The specialties are some of the things that I am working on as subsidiary goals to my career milestones. These are my interests that I am having to work on for more of a networking focus to my career. There are some things that I am grappling with on the certifications and skills needed to do the specialties. I will work on this additionally and will provide more of an update when I am ready on the specialties.
Career Goals
In addition to the career milestones, I do have some goals about what I want to accomplish for my career. I want to become a CIO, CISO or CTO eventually and do it before I turn 51 which is the average age of a CTO. This aim will shape how my career will turn out and how I prepare to be better equipped for this eventuality. Working on my soft skills, business skills and technology skills will enable me to get closer to landing my dream job as a CTO, CISO, or CIO.
Goal Setting
These career milestones and career goals shape my approach to setting goals for the year. This year I am focusing on mainly recertification and Cloud Networking skills. I will be doing four or five certifications this year around this aim. The certifications that I will be working on will include the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner - Foundational, Google Cloud Digital Leader, Microsoft AZ-104, CompTIA Security+, and the Cisco ENCC Specialist Exam.
In addition, I will be working on my Microsoft Certified Trainer certification that will be available after I pass the AZ-104 exam. I have smaller goals that I am working on as well. These include certain courses on Udemy, LinkedIn Learning and YouTube. I will be attending to my Security Operations and IAM knowledge for the CISSP domains and work on my specialties more.
Conclusion
As I work through my aims this year towards the goals of my career milestones and career goals, I will be better than I am now at the end of this journey. There are some goals for reading as well as some more content creation, influencer marketing and coaching courses. As the journey continues, we will continue down the path to a better future.
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mrcertification.tech
I will be expanding into another website this year focusing on the certification’s aspect of my sole proprietorship. The domain has already been bought, and I will be doing a website on mrcertification.tech that will be mainly content in the form of blog posts, articles, and study guides. I am working on this domain as an extension or division of my sole proprietorship, Aaron W. DeJong.
Planning on working with more content creation this year and still working on things regarding this division of the sole proprietorship. As this is a good-sized project, I will be trying to be more consistent this year and work on other projects. I am planning on creating some CompTIA, Microsoft, and Cisco exams for the study guides. This will be on my Linktree at linktr.ee/dejongaaron.
This project is more for my main website and some projects that I am doing. These projects are things like doing some home lab additions and programming projects that I am doing on GitHub. I will have links on this that will be available on my main website and my Linktree.
This is more of a showcase site that I will also use as my sole proprietorship main website. Thinking more about putting some content on this site regarding the things that I am doing as far as reading and studying. Working on this will help me with more of a portfolio for Computer Networking and some short form updates.
Other Projects
I am working on other projects and want to see how much content that I can make for my content creation platforms. These projects will include some programming projects and some home lab projects to allow for better use of my time. This will be something that I work on throughout the year and will be also working on my n8n-ollama-project that is more of a hobby at this point.
Conclusion
Some of the things that I will be doing this year are subject to change but I will be focusing more on my technical portfolio to show on my main website aaronwdejong.net. There might be some cybersecurity projects as well. I am working on some better projects this year and want to do at least four or five more projects.
The way that I am doing projects this year will be by using more space on my Hostinger VPC utilizing Docker and n8n. I am updating my Joomla Server to be more secure. I will be using more of my Joomla Server this year and will be adding some additional features with a more up to date Joomla version.
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Introduction
This is not necessarily a blog post like I have been doing normally. In this blog post I will be doing some looking back into 2025 and some looking forward to 2026. I decided to change the dynamic this time as it is my final blog post of 2025.
Looking Back
I completed quite a bit this year with three new IT certifications and four new sports coaching certifications. This was also a productive year where I extended my streak on Udemy to 188 weeks of learning. In addition, on TryHackMe I completed a 119-day streak and became a Guardian with my point total.
Looking back, I also completed some more things on HacktheBox and finished in the top 3% of learners on Udemy. Also, on LinkedIn I finished the year in the top 5% of active users. There are other things that I have done including having a sole proprietorship, Aaron W. DeJong, and being the owner for 3 years and 8 months since April of 2022.
I started working out with some Tai Chi, stretching, and some pushups and sit-ups this year which I hope to continue with in 2026. I am also working on some other things like studying Coaching, Sports Nutrition, Sports Psychology, Docker, and Prompt Engineering. These will be things that I continue to work on in 2026.
Looking Forward
As I am looking at the next year, 2026, I will be focusing more on Cloud Networking. As I specialize more in this subject, I will extend my lifelong learning into 2026. There are some certifications that I am planning on doing that are for IT and Sports Coaching certifications.
The IT certifications that I am looking at doing next year are the AZ-104, AZ-700, MCT, Network+, CCNP ENCC and AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner - Foundational. For the Network+, I will be re-certifying for my A+ and the ENCC will be re-certifying for the CCNA.
The Sports Coaching certifications that I want to do include the USA Football Youth Certification 2026 - Tackle certification and the Copper Certification from USA Wrestling. There will be more things to work on my four other certifications like these, and it is only every 3 months.
Conclusion
The main reason for this blog post is to show what I am thinking about doing for this next year. This is to also look back at some of the things that happened this year like the four Sports Coaching certifications, and the AZ-900, SC-900, and Linux Essentials certifications.
Going into next year with the intention of getting a job, being more independent and with my anxiety not being that much of an issue. I am thinking about getting the Network Administrator role again and might be able to use Sports Coaching to allow for a backup career if needed. I want to work on my anxiety more and then work on my resume to get another job.
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Youth Coaching
I am planning on completing some more coaching certifications next year. These include the USA Football 2026 Youth Tackle certification and the USA Wrestling Copper certification. I am still wanting to do Youth Football and Youth Wrestling next season. I think this will prepare me for a job that will be more beneficial for my anxiety and allow me to get back on track.
Goals in 2026
There are some goals that I have for 2026, and these include re-certifying for both my CCNA and A+. To re-certify for the CCNA, I will be working on doing the ENCC certification from Cisco. This is the CCNP level Enterprise Cloud Connectivity certification and covers cloud networking, SD-WANs, and VPNs.
I will be working on the A+ re-certification by doing the Network+ coming up in September 2026. Re-certifying for these two will drive my main goals this coming year. I also want to, as part of my training, do the AZ-104, AZ-700 and AWS Cloud Practitioner - Foundational certifications. These are some of the certifications that would be in line with the ENCC exam objectives.
Additional certifications that I will be looking at doing for the ENCC include the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate, the AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty, the Google Cloud Digital Leader, Google Cloud Engineer, and the Google Cloud Network Engineer. In addition to these, there are some things like SD-WAN and VPNs that are on the exam objectives for the ENCC exam.
GSEC Studies
I will also be studying for the GSEC through five certifications that are in line with the GSEC. The five certifications that I will be doing are the Certified in Cybersecurity, Security+, CySA+, AWS Cloud Practitioner - Foundational, and the Network Defense Essentials certifications.
I have been working on some of these with additional studies; however, I want to do these five mainly at the end of 2026 or into 2027. For the certifications that I will be doing for the GSEC the Security+ is the most valuable. This will allow me to get some cybersecurity skills in addition to my computer networking skills.
Conclusion
I am starting to do more specialization-oriented skills that will make me more multi-dimensional. The ENCC might have to wait until later in 2026 as I will be studying more Azure and AWS training materials. I am also thinking about doing some Google Cloud certification prep as well. Planning on completing four or five IT Certifications and two to three youth coaching certifications.
The training for this year was somewhat unplanned, but I am adding more structure and want to work on the ENCC and GSEC certifications for 2026. There are some additional aspects of my training which include Sports Psychology, Sports Nutrition, Mental Health, Youth Coaching, AI Prompt Engineering, Docker, Kubernetes and some more Ruby programming.