Excerpts 31–40 · Sobriety Holds, Everything Else Breaks
The False Summit
The reader thinks the story resolved. Emily, the wedding, sobriety as proof of concept. Then the floor drops — not into relapse, but into something nobody saw coming. The brain that survived addiction starts running without a governor.
Two parallel lines run through these ten excerpts. The sobriety line holds — that's the proof, that's what makes the memoir structurally unusual. The instability line keeps spiking: COVID, job loss, Matt's death, payroll failure, workplace betrayal.
Three times the old reflex shows up. Three times it gets turned away. But by Excerpt 40, something new is building — and it doesn't have a name yet.
Tension Map · E31–E40
The Road
And the Month the World Stopped
Airports → Houston → Kansas City
Hourly consulting. Points. Excel as survival language. Sunday goodbyes at the airport. Then COVID empties the terminals, kills the client, kills the company. Emily’s hospital won’t give her PPE. They don’t collapse — they get closer.
The airports thinning out. Whole rows empty. The simulation glitching.
What he told himself
“The money and the momentum were too good to pass up.”
What was actually happening
“When travel died, the work died with it. My company never had consistent work again.”
Two-year anniversary. Sobriety as foundation.
Travel work is good. Emily is supportive. Money is real.
Quarterly SOX Reporting
The Proposal
Mondo Condo → D&D table
Proposed during a D&D campaign. Group chat named ‘Quarterly SOX Reporting’ to hide the plan. Bought her a Mac Mini to keep her off his computer. D20 ring box, 3D printed. She said yes the moment he stood up.
Emily said the moment it clicked wasn’t when he spoke — it was when he started moving.
What he told himself
“How do you propose during COVID without it feeling like giving up?”
What was actually happening
“For the first time since the world stopped, I felt something simple and clean: forward.”
Sober enough to scheme. Clear enough to plan a heist.
COVID is the backdrop but the relationship is the foreground.
Mondo Condo
Austin, F&F, and Getting Fired
Monrovia house → tax firm → partner’s office
Three-floor house with Austin and Emily. Chiminea on the patio. Took a tax job that was supposed to be consulting. It wasn’t. Identity dissonance. Got called into a partner’s office before he could quit. ‘This isn’t a fit.’
The room was already staged. The people in it were props, not participants.
What he told himself
“Like the shoe had already dropped and this was the clean part where you pick it up.”
What was actually happening
“Embarrassment doesn’t care about facts. It’s your body keeping score even when your brain is arguing the grading rubric.”
Old pathways light up. He hears the pitch. Doesn’t take it.
Hired for a job that didn’t exist. Fired for not enjoying the replacement.
“For a split second, my mind reached for a drink. Not a bender. Just the old familiar fantasy: one shortcut to quiet.”
Loose Ends
Matt
Driveway → car → nowhere he can name
Shoveling snow. Text from Matt’s wife. ‘He might not make it.’ Booked a flight. Couldn’t get out that day. ‘We lost him.’ Kept driving. Didn’t pull over. The last thing they talked about was a jacket. Old Navy. Matt was a cheapskate.
“Why did he have to go? I was the alcoholic.”
♦ The emotional peak of the entire memoir. The one crisis Dave didn’t cause.
What he told himself
“Is this a joke? Not as in funny. As in: this cannot be real.”
What was actually happening
“I lost a brother. And I still have his contact in my phone.”
The memoir’s proof of concept. He doesn’t drink. Matt is the reason.
Best friend dies. No warning. No goodbye. A jacket was the last conversation.
“Wheels turned toward the liquor store. Grief as a hall pass. Pain as a reason. Then something else rose up. Matt. He would have wanted me alive.”
Benched
The Pool and the Startup
Mondo Condo pool → rural hospital books
On the bench at Stinnett. Two months of nothing. Pool. Walks. Reading. Summer as sabbatical. Then the startup: untangle bank accounts from the previous CFO. Archaeology, not accounting. Offered the controller job. Took it. Should’ve read the warning on the wall.
The pool stopped feeling like a vibe and started feeling like a delay.
What he told himself
“I could get used to this. It felt like freedom.”
What was actually happening
“Time, real unstructured time, always comes with a bill.”
Stable. Not panicking. A new kind of okay.
Unemployed again. Money leaving, not arriving. Then a mess that needs him.
Our People
The Wedding
Lodge near La Cygne, KS
November 13, 2021. Sixteen months after the proposal. First look at a gazebo. His little brother, chain and all, with a tear in his eye. A wasp assassinated by the wedding planner. Sparkler exit. Bundtinis on the bed. Quiet. The exhale.
Same smile. Different universe.
♦ The longest excerpt in the manuscript. 2,132 words. Where the narrator had the most language.
What he told himself
“We weren’t throwing a party anymore.”
What was actually happening
“We were married. And for once in my life, I didn’t try to outrun the moment.”
Alcohol was there. It wasn’t the plot. Coffee and bagels during photos.
The day holds. Everyone shows up. Nothing breaks that matters.
Material Weakness
The Hospital Startup
Laguna Beach → the fog
Honeymoon in Laguna Beach. Then the inbox. Controller of a startup that’s quietly dying. By April: ‘Are we going to make payroll?’ Uncertainty as a control system. Fog machine with precision. They found each other in the mess. Still haven’t been paid.
It wasn’t one lie. It was all of us realizing we had been isolated on purpose.
What he told himself
“Give me a pile of mismatched bank activity and I’ll give you a system.”
What was actually happening
“By April, we stopped getting paid. To this day, we still haven’t been paid.”
Old reflex offers the shortcut. Sobriety gives him clarity instead.
Payroll stops. The company is a fog machine. Nobody gets paid.
“My brain still offers me the shortcut. The warm silence. The off switch. But sobriety gave me something better than numb. It gave me clarity.”
Going Concern
Divine Intervention
The pool → Kendra’s phone call
Another job. Another bad manager. Every task rerouted through control. Then the phone rang at the pool. Kendra. CBIZ acquired Stinnett. Full-time role. Senior associate. It felt like divine intervention.
Like the universe had finally looped back around and handed me the correct door.
What he told himself
“Once I got moving again, the gaps wouldn’t matter.”
What was actually happening
“Wrong again.”
Not the drinking instinct. The escape hatch instinct.
Unemployed again. Took a job he didn’t want. Manager made it worse.
To The Moon
Data Analytics
Remote → the fun part of the building
Remote work as health supplement. Boring project, then a difficult client. Manager calls: ‘You did great today.’ First win in a long time. Data analytics role opens. Same day: raise. Getting paid to build video games.
It wasn’t the praise that mattered. It was the confirmation. I still knew how to do this.
What he told himself
“This was the one that was going to stick.”
What was actually happening
“At least, that’s what I thought.”
Building is relief. Focus. How his brain goes quiet without the trade.
Right role. Good manager. Raise on the same day as promotion. Runway.
Whiplash
The Partner’s Baby
Tampa conference → the inbox → the floor moving
Alteryx conference in Tampa. Reprimand in the inbox before the suitcase hit the floor. The partner’s spreadsheet was his baby — Dave improving it looked like calling it ugly. Senior manager told the partner she couldn’t control him. The woman who mentored him. The one he invited to his wedding. Hours dried up. 75% billable. And inside: thoughts speeding up, sleep getting weird, decisions feeling consequence-free.
The senior manager wasn’t a stranger. She was a person who had mentored me. It doesn’t make sense now.
♦ The fulcrum. Where the second crisis begins. The brain that survived addiction is now running without a governor.
What he told himself
“I was not about to make a career-limiting move in Tampa.”
What was actually happening
“My thoughts sped up. My sleep got weird. And I started making decisions like the consequences were optional.”
Sobriety holds — but the brain is speeding up. Something new is building.
Reprimand at a conference. Control disguised as management. Hours pulled. 75% billable.
Most memoirs have one crisis arc. This one has two. The first is addiction. The reader expects it. The second is the brain running at full speed with no containment.
The sobriety holds. That's the point. That's what makes the second collapse so disorienting — and so structurally necessary.
“My thoughts sped up. My sleep got weird.”
“And I started making decisions like the consequences were optional.”
Filed by the Architecture Council · March 2026
Chaos → Structured → Automated