I Broke My Collarbone Alone in a New City. Here’s What It Made Possible.
2018. I’d just moved to Austin alone. My partner was still in New York, hadn’t moved yet. I didn’t know a single person.
First week there, I went to an entrepreneur dinner. Six people around a circular table. I barely spoke to the guy across from me. He offered me a ride in his Tesla at the end of the night. I didn’t have a license. I didn’t tell him that.
Five days later, I was ten miles into a charity bike ride when I broke my collarbone.
The Stranger in the Rain
The ride organizers asked for my emergency contact. I had one — barely. Someone had my dogs. I’d been in Austin for five days. They loaded me into a van to meet the volunteer who’d come get me.
It was him. The guy from the dinner. The one I’d barely spoken to.
He pulled up in the rain and I climbed into his car. I made a dumb joke about finally getting that Tesla ride. He drove me to the hospital. Picked me up afterward. Brought food. Walked my dogs. Checked in all week.
We became close friends. My partner was like, "Who is this guy?!"
She wasn't wrong. Cut to three years later: he’s our donor. Quinn exists because I broke my collarbone in a city where I didn’t know anyone.
What You Can’t See From Inside the Bad Day
In the moment, it was just bad. Broken bone. Alone in a city I’d lived in for five days. A stranger driving me home in the rain.
Zoom out eight years: that accident is the direct reason my family exists the way it does.
We evaluate setbacks too close to them.
We’re inside the bad day trying to make sense of it — when the actual meaning of the bad day might only be visible years from now.
📚 Research corner: Daniel Gilbert, a psychologist at Harvard, calls this the impact bias: humans systematically overestimate how much a bad thing will hurt us, and for how long. We think we’ll be devastated. We rarely are. And we almost never predict what the bad thing will quietly make possible.
The broken collarbone that wrecked my Saturday is the direct reason my family exists. I couldn't have planned it or predicted it. I could only have missed it by refusing to get into the van.
The Zoom Out
Someone asked me recently what the worst thing that happened to me in the last few years was. I sat on it longer than you'd expect. Not because nothing came to mind. Because I couldn't figure out what still counted as bad.
There’s a version of me that gets a clean, easy, comfortable first year in Austin. No bike accident. No stranger in the rain. No hospital. That version of me probably misses the dinner entirely, and never builds that friendship.
I don’t want that version.
I’m not saying everything happens for a reason. I don’t think the universe planned my collarbone. But some of what you’re calling a bad year right now is probably a hinge you can’t see yet. You won’t know which ones until you’re eight years out.
You can’t always see the hinge from the inside. But you can stay in the van.
The worst thing that happened to me in 2018 was the hinge everything else turned on.
1. Think of one thing in the last two years you're still describing as a setback. A loss, a miss, a wrong turn. Write it down in one sentence.
2. Write the version of the story you'll tell about it in five years. Even if you have to make some of it up. What might it have made possible?
3. Make it easier: Write the year it happened. Then two words: what it felt like then. Then one word for what it might be building now.
What's the worst thing that happened to you in the last three years that you haven't finished zooming out on yet?
📚 Reading corner
Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert. The research on why humans are systematically wrong about what will devastate them — and for how long. Gilbert's core finding: we are terrible at predicting our own emotional futures, in both directions. We think the bad thing will ruin us. It almost never does. And we almost never see what it quietly makes possible. My collarbone story is basically a case study.
🎧 Cool find
Freakonomics Radio — “The Upside of Quitting”. The researchers ran an actual experiment: people who were stuck on major life decisions made them by coin flip, then were followed up on six months later. The people who made the change were measurably happier. The sunk-cost fallacy isn't just about money. Same energy as the bike accident: sometimes the disruption is the unlock. It's only obvious in hindsight.
