I wanted to fly when I was a kid.

I used to sit in a clothes hamper and pretend it was a cockpit. That was my version of flying before I even understood what it actually meant.

In high school, there was an aviation course. Some of my friends took it. I didn't.

I told myself I wasn't smart enough. I also believed you needed perfect vision and a lot of money to even have a shot. So I never pursued it.

Life moved on.

Years later, I learned something I wish I knew back then. There's a whole side of aviation most people never see. General aviation. Regular people learning to fly. It wasn't out of reach. I just assumed it was.

By then, I was married, raising a family, working in cybersecurity. Not just any corner of it. I work in product security for medical devices. The kind of work where the question is never if something fails. It's what happens to the patient when it does.

My son was about to graduate college. And I brought it up to my wife, something I'd always wanted but never tried.

She told me to go for it.

I took a discovery flight. That was it.

After that first flight, I bought an Xbox. Then a yoke controller. Then I started flying in Microsoft Flight Simulator. This is how I think. I don't just jump into things. I model them first. I get a feel for the environment before I'm in it for real. In security, we call that threat modeling. In aviation, I just called it not wanting to embarrass myself.

I've logged 10 flights now. Montgomery Field in San Diego and Gillespie Field in El Cajon. Two flights over Oahu. One hour in a tailwheel doing aerobatics, which I did not expect to enjoy as much as I did. The hours are small. The learning curve is not.

I also let it sit. Life gets full. Work, family, training for triathlons, trying to actually sleep. Flying went to the back burner for a stretch. I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

But I'm back in it. Ground school open. Flight log ready.

This site is where I document that journey. Not from the perspective of someone chasing a dream for the first time, but someone who almost convinced himself it wasn't possible, and is now proving otherwise.

Along the way, I bring how I think about risk from my work in security into flying.

If you've ever talked yourself out of something you really wanted, you'll probably recognize parts of this.

ProdSecPilot is where I write about aviation, product security, AI-assisted workflows, and how complex systems behave under real-world conditions. Different domains, same mindset: preparation, risk, discipline, and understanding what happens when systems fail.