
# What is reverse bushwhacking?

Sometimes when you are forging an unforgiving or unmanageable trail, you need to recognize that the path has become too difficult and you just have to turn around. There is no other option.

Early in my career I felt the warm, tender embrace not from Microsoft products, but from the ol' reliable LAMP stack. AWS was the hot new thing after transitioning away from VPS / shared hosting.

The exhileration of my own boxes, to do as I wanted! The terror of knowing you could rack up bills, but more than anything I just enjoyed the flexability and options at the time.

Also NONE of it was ever Microsoft. In theory I think it was possible to run MSSQL in the cloud, but that's beyond the point. The early experiences in my career of running PHP on IIS were distant nightmares in the rearview mirror and life was good.

Till it wasn't. I had a great run in the NY / NJ tri-state area, but once I moved to Vermont I arrived in the technical desert. There's a lot of embedded Microsoft in the state, a lot of folks holding on to REALLY old software they don't even have a good rationale for using. Old clunky CMS systems that are only popular in New Zealand for instance... I digress.

I've spent a significant portion of my career literally or figuratively running away from Microsoft and I just... I can't anymore. It's not that I've finally fallen prey to the siren song of Steve... though his rhythmic chants are compelling. DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!

I have a really good job opportunity that has asserted itself in my life. It's not the path I chose, in fact I was trying to get off Mr. Toad's wild ride when things took an unexpected turn and I effectively was given a do-over.

Rarely in life do you get meaningful, clean-slate do-overs. I don't want to waste this. It's ok to go backwards a little bit even if it seems like reverse progress.

So all that time I spent running from Microsoft is over... sort of. My linux experience isn't going away, and my preference towards open source tools naturally drives me away from the MS "enterprise" ecosystem. Unfortounately for me, Satya Nadella has done a good job and the realities of 2024 are that Azure is a reasonable place to host just about any infrastructure.

Here's to open eyes to both old and new trails, and a willingness to color in shades of blue. We'll give it a go, let's see where the winds take us.

Mat Gilbert

After over a decade of avoiding Microsoft, a new challenge appears

Reverse Bushwacking


# I'm quitting reddit.

Or at least I'm trying to.

One of the biggest mental health challenges I've faced in my professional career has been a sense of demand avoidance and procrastination. One of my biggest sources of procrastination and doom scrolling has been reddit. It's easy to look at this from a "he doesn't care / won't work" perspective but the large issue is that I retreat and retract from social situations that I feel aren't giving me the chance for success. Reddit isn't the problem, but my use of it as an escape is an actionable symptom I can do something about.

My choices to quit are twofold. One, I feel like being a shitty person needs to become a bad business model. The only way I can voice my opinion on the protests is to not use the platform that I've enjoyed for the past decade. It's a bitter pill to swallow, and one I'm honestly having trouble following through on. Spez if you're reading this you can eat shit, I'm upset that you have poisoned the platform I contributed to for over a decade. You're not going anywhere, so I'm out. I regret contributing what I did, but (so far) I haven't decided to delete my content and posts. Like the subtitle said, it's been proving harder than anticipated.

My second, and more important reason to quit reddit is to take control of my life, and put my time and effort into things that are reciprocally beneficial. One of the observations I made during the reddit protests was that I spent a lot of time commenting, sometimes engaging in troll / flame wars but never really actually CONNECTING with people. I posted, I relished my upvotes but what did they even represent? What's the point of impressing people you will never interact with if all it does is enrich a business?

Over a year ago I gave up alcohol because I was using it as a crutch to cope with unsustainable and unhealthy life and social conditions. Conditions like jobs you just "can't leave" and then... you get let go and you can't even get the jobs that you would turn your nose up at. Being put in prolonged situations where my values are not respected has reseulted in some pretty severe anxiety and demand avoidance around things that I don't want to do, or don't think will work out.

If the repeated exposure to unescapable stress sounds like PTSD, well it probbably is. I do not have a formal diagnosis but working with my therapist has opened my eyes to my avoidance behaviors. Regardless of the lables attached to them, they are all things that I can work to either improve myself on, or find ways to remove myself from situations before things become unteneable again.

The thing that is craziest to me about alcohol is that it was actually very easy to quit. I did it cold turkey, I just stopped spending money on it, which was easy in part because part of my stress was about not having money to begin with. I also had motivation to quit drinking because I felt (rightly so) that I would lose everything from my wife to my house if I didn't make a significant change.

Quitting alcohol was also helped by friends and family who supported me, and were just there socially for me. Who didn't make it weird when I didn't want any booze. I did lose friends because of this change, I think this is one of the things people fear most about drinking and it's worth noting. It's a real thing. You're going to have to make sacrifices like this that don't feel good if you want to improve your life.

Anyway back to the subject at hand. I go on at length about alcohol because it was another crutch in my elaborate support structure made almost entirely of maladaptive behaviors. Alcohol was identified as a problem, and successfully removed. I haven't had a drink in over a year. Mission accomplished. So quitting a social media site should be easy, right?

Actually, no. Even though I have tried to quit I've been unable to truly avoid reddit. Just like TikTok it's just become a facet of society that is blasted at you whether you want it or not. Ignoring reddit at times means ignoring people whom I care about that send me information via reddit. I'm going to read it, I resepect and enjoy them and my beef with the platform doesn't justify cutting off my ACTUAL social network.

I'm writing this post because I just want to give myself some compassion about quitting reddit being difficult. I find myself returning to view political news, which is another poisonus cycle I want to end. The other day I found myself responding to a thread on a new jersey devils subreddit, which again... these are things I miss doing. But I have to make myself question whether the actions I'm doing are actually benefiting me or if I'm just going through the motions.

Being real for a moment, I've just kind of replaced reddit with Facebook. The main difference is that the activity I'm putting into facebeook is actually prodcuctive from a networking and talking to people perspective. It's opened a few doors for me and in that I can honestly say even though it's a lesser evil, I am getting something about it that reddit wasn't giving me.

The other piece of this puzzle is YouTube and our VT2U channel, which has been an incredibly fulfilling project in terms of telling a story I want to. It has allowed me to present myself to the world in a way that I not only approve of, but I'm proud of. Instead of just lurking on the edges and commenting, I've become an active contributor. Not even anything special, just being myself. My vibe has attracted a tribe, and by putting myself out there and showing the real me I have opened the door to real and meaningful connections in ways that reddit never did. Shout out to Hunter at Saratoga Bass Fishing and Matt from BareFishin, you guys have singlehandedly restored my faith in humanity. All you did was be yourselves, I can't thank you enough for being YOU, and accepting me for me.

Reddit doesn't serve the thing it used to for me in my life, and I have to take many, many steps backwards to truly replace the gaping hole that it's left in my life. It helped to turbocharge my tech career after college. Like Napster, ICQ, AIM and the Gamespy Forums I was part of, they are times and places to enjoy and reflect on. Not something that could last forever.

My choice is that rather than participating in platforms, I need to build my own. Instead of joining teams or clubs, I need to be the leader and organizer that I can be to create the meetups, events and communities that I want to be a part of. Whether it's facebook or YouTube I've found a way to be more actively engaged. That is the thing I need more of. It's not the platform, it's what you're doing on the platform.

I am ready to be the change that I seek in the world, the first step is leaving behind old and unproductive habits. Reddit helped me become who I am but slowly over time like alcohol did, it became a maladaptive antipattern holding me back. I may never have a drink of alcohol again, but I know soon I will point my browser at old.reddit.com and succum to the FOMO. Quitting reddit is harder than quitting alcohol for me and that's ok. In the larger picture of harm reduction I'm making positive steps every time I choose to edit video or plan a trip with a friend over scrolling through pictures or arguing with meat or bots online.

I hope this post gives you the willingness to look at your own feelings, thoughts and actions with an honest, open and critical eye. It's not about being hard on yourself it's about being honest, and embracing the feelings even when they are uncomfortable.

This is where the true growth is.

I'm pretty sure I'm not going to find that on reddit.

I'm trying to change my habits and routines to be happier and more productive. It's proving to be very difficult.

On Quitting Reddit


# Today my new website is live.

It feels kind of like the photo above.

It doesn't look grand, there isn't a huge amount of stuff to it yet but it's all the things I need.

The river isn't ok, but at least it's flowing and that means it's time to get to work.

It's a next.js template I bought, trimmed and styled to my liking pepperd with some personal photos.

It's "craigslist ugly" as some might say but I'm calling it minimalism with a purpose: "Telling a story".

The UI is here to do one thing, get you to the content I told you about. Whether it's chatting with me
at a bar or giving a talk at some sort of conference, I want to make sure that when I tell people to
"check it out on my website" the process is as easy as can be.

This means no extra crap to get in the way. No unnecessary design, and the only trappings of social media
share stuff are just extras from my pre-made template that I choose to leave because realistically, I'm
shooting myself in the foot by removing them.

As long as its aesthetically pleasing and clean, for me that's the real test.

My new website is live and I'm excited at the possibilities.

Publishing a new version of the website. Going live. Moving forward.

Website Relaunch


# Hello world, welcome to my new blog.

It's been over a decade since I put up a simple sandwich board website. Over the years it accumulated a few decorations, but ultimately it's remained simple
becuase I didn't want to show people the shell of an empty website I forgot about. There's nothing worse than an engaging and interesting blog that abruptly ends five years ago. I think over
the years I became so afraid of this appearance that I let it stop me from writing, from expressing my ideas. Being worried about the reaction to your work can be overpowering and terrifying.
On my website though, I have a solution. I control it 100%. I don't need to enable comments, or even provide contact information.

This is my new webiste. I'm goint to try to post as much as I can but there's really no guarantees. That's life. I need to stop being afraid of being the dead ghost blog and just write as much as I can.

I trust that my vibe will attract the tribe required. The honey will undoubtedly bring in a few haters who enjoy the flavor but still find a way to be negative. They are not bad people, they are hurt, misunderstood
or traumatized folks who just never got the love and attention they desreved. I trust in my awesomeness and I'm tired of letting the judgement of others prevent me from being my true authentic self.

Hello, world, welcome to the new blog.


A new website, a new look, and a new effort on writing and sharing thoughts.

Hello World


What have I accomplished during my professional career, what could have done better and where do we go from here?

What follows is a basic stream of thought about the jobs I've had, trimmed in an attempt to not fire any vollies directly at specific individuals. This is going to be updated, pruned, edited and refined over time. It is an evolving story, one I am still figuring out how to tell.

I need to find a way to talk about my experiences. To tell the whole story as much as possible.

I want to be extremely clear that moving on and achieving forgiveness for myself is my main objective. I cannot heal the pain I feel by hurting others.

If you do not like how you are reflected in the stories below, I would first ask you to reflect and ask yourself whether your concerns are ego driven.

Secondly if you really feel that it's unfair, I encourage you to contact me directly and correct the record. Unlike others I am comitted to transparency, honesty and the truth. Sunlight heals all, and this is the only way moving forward.

## In the beginning

In 2004 / 2005 I was jetissoned from the education system into the real world. Ultimately I moved back home to NJ from RI where I was going to school.

It took me a few months of sitting around and getting bored, but eventually I found a job at a local kayak store and made myself useful.

## NYC

After that I worked at a company in NYC after a good friend got me an interview. It was my first experience working for a startup company.

The startup was interesting, but there was zero room to spread my wings. Efforts to add efficiency and remove drudgery and toil from my workplace were actively thwarted. It wasn't the place for me. The commute killed me, not worth it but the allure of NYC was there.

## Back to NJ

After the startup, I found myself still living in NJ but working in NJ was less painful. The tech wasn't as exciting, but at least there was somewhat interesting work. I built a custom interface to a messaging app for blackberries (remember those?). I built a really cool integration
with the first ever API I interacted with, the Magic Logic CubeIQ API. Still to this day one of the most fun things I worked on. I was naievely excited when one of the bosses came and asked me to figure out how many cargo trucks it would take to fit all the inventory in the warehouse in it.
Gee I wonder what they used that information for...

Unfortounately the local job was not a stable one, in a meeting where the CEO explained oncoming bankruptcy challenges he completely failed to assauge the crouds fear of "what happens if we don't get bought." At least he did not sway me. I was gone in a month, and everybody else got
fired.

## HEADS UP!

The next job was one of the best, working for a small weather company in NJ. I made some cool friends and geniuntely made the orginzation a better place through added features during my time there. Things fell apart when the person who was the barrier between me and management left.

Needless to say while I loved my time at that compnay, there were some unprofessional experiences towards the end that soured me. It was interesting to work with non technical nerds and see how technology can be ignored by incredibly intelligent people. Overall it was a great period of
growth for me and I can honestly say there was really only one or two people who added a negative flavor to the punch bowl.

## Back to the City

Escaping the weather company in NJ led me back to NYC. I thought getting a job at a big company would show me "how the big boys" did software, and boy was I wrong. I found how slow, thoughtless and callously mechanic "corporate" america can be. I had project managers BRAG about their
lack of competence, as if this was somehow a shield for accountability from the shit thier bad decisions rained down on me. I had contractors and employees LITERALLY engage in screaming mactches over my cubicle. I had a co-worker leave food to rot in his desk (that shared my cube) for over
a week. Eventually the smell was so overpowering I went through his drawers to deal with it myself. Our boss was non-existant, when he did show up he was out of touch and clueless. It was like being on a giant ship where nobody was at the wheel and somehow nothing ever really got solved or done.

Suffice to say I did not learn much at the big company, but it did springboard me into one of the most consequential jobs of my career.

## Explosive career growth

The robot notes company. A farm of networked 2.5 axis pen plotters and an API attached to them was one of the most incredible and fantastical career experiences of my life. It truly was like working in Willy Wonkas factory, I saw some shit go down. It changed me as a person and even though
parts of the experience caused lasting damage it was such an impactful experience that I would do it again without hesitation. Not everything that is good for you feels good. Sometimes you need to experience true pain to learn and grow. This might have been the best job I ever had.

## Headed North

After the fugue dream of startup life ended, my wife and I landed in Vermont. I found out that my "jersey" attitude was not always welcome with the passive-agressive nature of the north. There were people native and flatlander that seemed interested in me, but there was always this
wary guardedness. Something that told me I was an outsider without the words being spoken. In retrospect maybe I wasn't listening to my own internal messages too, the pressures of modern society to earn a living pushed me to do some things that professionally put me on a downward trajectory.

I had a stint at a local agency that did not go well, it again showed me the incredible blind spot to technology that otherwise capable folks can have. Everybody thinks they can just wave a wand and make it happen, they don't need to listen to the engineers. You are wrong. It matters when there are
dead canaries on the floor of the coal mine. You do not shovel them into a bucket and go on with your day.

## Network at your own peril

I learned a painful lesson about not listening to my gut at the next job. Networking is a great way to get jobs but if you are not listening to the people who offer you these jobs you can find yourself in difficult situations. I learned tough lessons about the lengths
people will go to willfully ignore you, talk over you, and disrespect you. Folks who praised your technical expertise will cast it in the trash the moment it's not convienient for them. It felt like networking in the beginning but it turned out I was blindly allowing someone to set fire
to the bridge I was standing on. Still not sure what happened.

# BURNOUT

After another extremely negative professional experience, I came to the conclusion that I was dealing with significant mental health challenges: Burount. Years of attempting to take on others failure as my own, in my people pleasing nature caused me to completely ignore
the negative consequences others actions had on myself. It's not that I'm unwilling to be accountable, quite the opposite. I am completely intolerant of situations where I am held accountable but others are not. I am unwilling to sit quietly while someone else eats my lunch,
takes credit for my idea, or sabatoges me behind closed doors with a smile on their face.

## Recovery

I am doing better now. I have a very, very boring job that I am very, very thankful for. I am spending time shooting, editing and enjoying the life and opportunities that my current situation afford. I am trying not to let the ghosts of my past dictate my future. It's still scary, I am
still the traumatized rescue dog that pees on the floor when someone's phone rings at the adoption event. I still feel like am on the journey to a better place, but I am in a remarkably better place than I was a year ago. I quit drinking and it was one of the best choices of my life, it's
forced me to re-evaluate the way I'd been living and some of those changes are absolutely permanent. No going back, the new life is too good to give up on.

## The future

I still want to be technical. You are reading a post on a website that I created myself instead of sucummbing to the common sense of using a click and drag UI.

I would not get the control I wanted, and more importantly I would not get the satisfaction of knowing I could do it and actualizing on that. Having that agency taken away from me professionally has been one of the largest sources of trauma that I still haven't found an adquate salve for.

The only solution I can think of is to start from the ground up. I need to build things, the things I want, the way I want without having to fight people to justify my choices. This is the ONLY way I am willing to work, whether it is making pizza dough, selling kayaks or writiing software.

The future is bright but it depends on action and dilligence. I have one of those, and I am getting better at the other.

What have I accomplished during my professional career, what could have done better and where do we go from here?

My Career


# I'm stuck.

I find that my creativity is at the same time both my greatest and worst asset. I get upset when I cannot be creative, yet at times I seem totally unaware of how I'm painting myself into a corner.

I will come back and update this post at some point, but lets brain dump here we go.

## Robot Draws You!

In 2015-2016 while working at startup Bond in NYC, I came up with the idea of "facetrace" which eventually became Robot Draws You! It's a combination of software and hardware that will eventually
support push-button pen-plotter photo booth functionality with ZERO INTERNET REQUIRED.

## Honorable Mention - RasphotoD

A part of Robot Draws You! is a piece of software that sits on a raspberry pi and talks to DSLR cameras. I have an older Canon T6 so it will be interesting to see what kind of functionaity will exist
when/if I can ever upgrade my camera. Publishing this piece as a standalone thing for others to hack on is a goal of mine.

## VT2U

I absolutely love filming outdoor adventures, fishing in particular. I've been fishing my butt off lately, and I've accrued a bunch of extra footage. I have taken ten proverbial plates from the buffet
back to my table and I have no idea what to do with this mountain of fantastic footage. Ok I know what ot do, but it's a slow and tedious process. I am excited my wife is willing to help sequence some
footage and maybe, just maybe we can start to dig out. I've been more consistent lately, which the YouTube algorithm has been rewarding me for. I need to keep this up.

## Verticaltubejig.com

I have developed a pretty good process for making some very functional fishing lures for lake trout. My biggest hangups at the moment are getting a nice pearl white paint to spray (can't get in cans)
as well as photographing the lures so they appear the way I want them to. Perfectionism is absolutely skullfucking me on this one. I need to just put the store up with good enough photos and MOVE ON
WITH MY LIFE. The marketing I'm doing is actually working and I really need to make a new batch of lures so I can stop sending people the DIY instructions and start taking their money instead.

## matgilbert.com

This site has languished on an old AWS EC2 instance for years, a graveyard of old projects that are not relevant to my career anymore. It's getting fixed. If you're reading this, there's something new going on

## vt2u.com

Our YouTube project has been a huge success in terms of generating good vibes, meeting cool people and practicing something new (video editing). It's becoming it's own thing. I really enjoy bringing
VT2U, come along for the adventures! The website just needs to be some galleries of extra bonus content, and links to the episodes to juice that sweet sweet SEO.


## Garden

I put a grey tarping down on top of the garden this year and it failed to contain the weeds. Now I've taken SOME of it up, but I need to cut some of it to totally remove it. The sunk cost has kind of
shocked my brain and I can't really make decisions on it now. The rain is going to be awful for a week so I'm stuck now we'll see what happens.

I find that my creativity is at the same time both my greatest and worst asset. I get upset when I cannot be creative, yet at times I seem totally unaware of how I'm painting myself into a corner.

matgilbert.com

mental health

Reverse Bushwacking

On Quitting Reddit

Website Relaunch

Hello World

My Career

My Projects are Stuck

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