Working is no problem
Just as long as I keep my mind
Working in a factory
Science is so fun
There must be more than this
I need to make some home improvements
I’ll call some guys that know about it
I got to work tomorrow morning
I’ll be clean but not neat
I’m not a race car driver
Everything looks the same
I’m an advanced pronoun
I get my lessons in the rain
Putting things in boxes
I look at them and pack them
I’m not a smart person
But I try to have my fun

Destination Unknown is a story within the larger story, broken down into segments with the same basic plot structure as the entire story. Damron takes one piece of bad advice and ignores one piece of good advice (namely, the theme of the book) and runs himself into deep trouble.

In late 2017 (around the time of Chapter 9, Crazy), the minister of the church I attend, who is thanked in the Acknowledgements, gave a sermon on the Book of James, Chapter 1. After the sermon, I printed James 1:2-4 on a small piece of paper early one morning at the office and tacked it to the wall of my “work station.” This scripture served me well as time and events wore on, and became the epigraph for the story.

The Work Stations scene lays out the conclusions reached and the strategy for dealing with the post-diagnosis return to the working world. As a general rule, the dialogue in each scene is contrived except where specifically noted to the contrary. The preceding sentence demonstrates how being a lawyer never completely goes away.

The Pylon song titles as chapter titles came together beautifully, somehow, at a Starbucks in a Target store in Atlanta one afternoon in October, 2019. I had short amount of time and was struggling with the band/titles for use with Part One. I think each song captures the mood of the plot at the time within each chapter.

Combing through the old Athens ‘music scene’ videos and songs made me come to realize how much my hometown means to me. Athens has its faults, and is ‘a silly place’ (as with Camelot in Monty Python and the Holy Grail), but I say “I’m from Athens, Georgia” with pride every time someone asks.

Pure form
Real done
Like wild
Good vibes
Everything is cool
There are these forms I like to watch
There are these shapes which talk to me
I like forms, and forms like me
The more you look, the more you see

Working is No Problem and Cool are two of only three chapters that have only one scene. The first two scenes needed to be separate because Work Stations is a prologue, but I didn’t want to call it that. The LC is described exactly as I recall the scene, which occurred on May 5, 2017, except the part about Sandra in HR startling me. I wanted to make clear that I followed through on my resolution to ditch Carol, and Carol and Sandra in HR do resemble one another (though Sandra in HR looks less similar to Aunt Bee than Carol).

The dialogue with Jane is contrived and not very descriptive I’m afraid because I can’t recall specifics, but the conversation was flirty, genuine, and fun, giving me the incorrect impression that others in the office would be of the same demeanor. The ‘guy in the crazy plaid jacket’ is Penelope’s manager, later referred to in the story as ‘Bartholomew,’ who became one of the brokers I most respected and enjoyed working with.

I decided early on that I wouldn’t give The MP a name to allow the reader to project their own image of, and experiences with, a truly awful manager onto the character.

By the way, the character names were chosen mostly at random, with a few exceptions (discussed later). I gave everyone random, quirky names so I could easily search for a given character using the Search function in MS Word. I planned to rename the characters with something that would be fitting (and an inside joke) with the real person.

To reach my objective publishing date, I couldn’t make the time to run out the seafood bit as I intended. But I decided to not switch the industry back to real estate because the inside joke about the Skeazy/swimming shellfish, Ratchet/affixed shellfish was simply too awesome to end up on the cutting room floor. However, it’s one of those inside jokes wherein if it needs explaining, you wouldn’t find it funny.

Fell in the lake but I didn’t drown
I had on my life preserver
Out in the sun but I can see
I had on my sunglasses
Walked down the stairs but I didn’t fall
I held on to the banister
There were mosquitos I got no bites
I had on my insect repellant

“I worked hard not to be noticed. What I failed to notice was that everybody noticed that.”

Shutdown Corner introduces Warren and gives a bit of background on Asperger’s and me. The “others” referenced in the conversation were Phinizy and Jane. A key change I made as I learned about plot structure was moving a large part of the exposition and introduction of the characters on my team into Gray Rock (Part Two), hoping the story wouldn’t be bogged down by too many characters.

As I was typing that prior sentence, I remembered no, that’s not what happened at all. In reality, my Dear Producer, Melissa, in her ever-direct Dear Producer way, read my initial draft of Part One and said “you’re throwing all of these characters at me! This is all mishmash and confusing.” And she was right. Destination Unknown is about four people. Damron, Warren, The MP, and Jane, with a few bit characters rounding out the setup until the climactic grande entrée of you-know-who in Stop It (Chapter 8). Melissa’s advice (helpfully delivered in my preferred two-by-four-the-face manner) was key – hit the ground running and keep the story moving, especially early on. I tried, anyway.

The Backstreet’s conversation was actually with Vincent (and waiting on Jane to call in from the road) and occurred before the company office moved to its new location. I had this conversation be with Simon because the scene sets up the next chapter, and Jane has yet to re-enter the picture.

The conference rooms are actually named after historic Atlanta neighborhoods, which is lame to begin with, and come on, the gay nightclub conference room names was entirely to funny to not include.
The Backstreet’s Conference Room. Pretty awesome, eh? “…on a clear day from this perch at the northwest corner of the building, you could see the Blue Ridge Mountains, one hundred miles away.” [Quote from Chapter 17, Image by Garrett Rowland]

For those of you on the inside, here’s a map:
Backstreet’s: Cabbagetown (31NW)
Burkhart’s: Castleberry Hill (31NE)
The Heretic: Edgewood (31E)
Mixx: Sweet Auburn/Little 5 Points (31SE)
Blake’s: Elting Room (31SW)
Mary’s Lounge: Oakhurst (32NW)
Bulldogs: Poncey-Highland (32E)
Hideaway: Old Fourth Ward (32SE)
Atlanta Eagle: Reynoldstown (32SW)

Sadly, no scenes in the book occurred in Inman Park.

You got me on the end of a string
You throw me down but you won’t let me go
You got me wrapped around your little finger
You know I gotta come back
Like a boomerang, Like a bad deed
Like a bounced check, Like a rubber ball
Like a Yo-Yo

Yo-Yo finishes the table setting for the remainder of Destination Unknown. Project Update is an amalgamation of many such meetings, as declared–‘each meeting unfolded along the same recognizable pattern.’ Much later, around the time of Chapter 26 (August 1, 2018, to be precise), The MP was such a spectacular jerk at one such meeting that the following day I sat down with the team and walked them through “the meeting” pattern. They seemed bewildered by what I was saying; afterwards I regretted doing it, but I would get the occasional smirk from one of them when I would offhandedly refer to ‘the disclaimer of responsibility portion of that meeting’ or some such in conversation. Nevertheless, my talk with the team reinforced to me that openly calling out a narcissist would be a grievous error.

Likewise, The Token is an amalgamation of many conversations with Jane, again setting the table for future scenes. At least that was the intention. For instance, the lunch meeting occurred around my third month on the job, but the “I’ll be the token” exchange in the final paragraph actually occurred around Chapter 16 and was via instant message.

Beep Beep
Well Well
Everybody’s in a violent fog
I’ve been here, you’ve been here
Give me a pen or a camera
No air on the moon
No water on Mars
Could’ve been you, could’ve been me
I don’t remember, but I’m a chimera
All we have is four minutes
Dust dust dust the window of a plane
All we are is four minutes
Pray pray throw it away
Write it down
Take a picture of four minutes

Beep is a great song here to pick up the pace as the story does as well. This is why you are doing yourself a disservice and not seeing the whole story in the best context/mood without listening along with the soundtrack.

I tried to make Hostage Situation and Driving School as accurate as possible (from my perspective, as I recall, etc.). With characters on The LC, including Sandra in HR, Tania in HR, and others with whom I have not spoken since I began writing, I have tried to be scrupulously accurate and cut most anything I wasn’t sure about. I instructed Sandy and Melissa during editing to highlight any sentence wherein I project intentions, motives, thoughts, mood, etc. onto a character. I intended to only include those intentions, etc., which I knew for a fact, but I’ve caught a few minor oversights in this area since publication.

To belabor the point, I wanted to be scrupulously accurate and relentlessly first-person in the scenes with those who might not be friendly to me, or have heard untrue things said about me. I hope those who are parties to the story will find the segments pertaining to them accurate and truthful, or at least fair coming from my perspective, and they can infer that the rest of the story is also accurate and fairly stated. That’s all.

And, as stated elsewhere, as author Jerry Stahl is quoted in Mary Karr’s essential The Art of Memoir: “If you had to live it, you get to write it.”

Having reached the midpoint of Destination Unknown, Damron has reached a false peak. Job is coming together, team is coming together, he has a good prospect for the insider/confidant he needs. Now is the time to knock it all down!

Gravity has you in its hold
You cannot resist the urge
You cannot motivate your feet you cannot
It pulls and pulls
You cannot resist the urge
You cannot move you cannot dance
You cannot motivate you cannot
Your feet they feel like steel
You cannot feel your heel
You cannot resist the urge

The Hierarchy of Needs conversation with Jane was drawn from my contemporaneous notes, which I used to write the conclusion of a manuscript I was working on at the time, The Burnout of Generation X. The portion of the scene where I discuss this manuscript was dropped from the story. Around the same time, I had the manuscript almost finished but threw it all away in despair that fall. I had written the vast majority of the book pre-diagnosis and was unable to finish it because I didn’t know that person anymore (I allude to this in A Maze With No Exit).

I do wish I could’ve given a better description of the interactions and behavior, the word salads, narcissistic manipulation, and the like, that I experienced at the time. But in those moments I was in a supercharged fight-or-flight state and don’t recall specifics, sort of like trying to recall what you were doing immediately before and after a car accident. Later in the story, Gray Rock and beyond, I had learned that the latter was the intended product of the former, and I had learned the ways to prevent the cycle from commencing by shutting down interactions at the onset, i.e., to Nip It in the Bud (Chapter 11).