It's the 23nd Anniversary of My Day of Not Dying
Life is beautiful but unfair; introducing The Alchemy of Rage
On January 31st, 2003, my friend Jordan and I woke up early in Homer, Alaska, before piling into his silver Toyota Tacoma and heading off to the airport in Anchorage. I’d postponed my acceptance into Teach For America to take my $4,000 and live on a farm in Alaska for a winter to finish a novel I’d been writing; Homer was the perfect place to be surrounded by snow and nothingness and beauty, where we saw the Northern Lights on a nightly basis. But after several months of peeing my pants with excitement whenever the temperature hit the double digits, I would have slaughtered the mailman for the chance to faun over some Ottoman architecture. Meanwhile, all Jordan had to do was call his rich mother for some money to travel. Lucky.
I had no money to travel, just enough money to stay put. Every day for five months, without fail, I’d planted myself in a chair in the room I rented from Mossy Kilcher, whose kitchen and living room were covered with photos of her niece, the singer-songwriter Jewel, who grew up on that very farm. I took long walks on the black sand beach at noon—absorbing as many hours of daylight as I could—but was otherwise tied to my laptop, writing a novel.
Jordan hopped out at the airport’s unloading zone, grabbing his black duffel bag and camera equipment from the bed of his silver Toyota pickup. He left the engine running and gestured for me to slide over into the driver’s seat.
“Don’t forget to feed the puppy,” he said.
“You said you were going to leave me food for the two weeks. And pay for gas for the truck. It’s on empty.” I unearthed my wallet to show him the $5 bill and lack of a credit card.
“Yeah, about that,” he said, his eyes shifting towards the terminal. “Listen, my plane is about to leave.” He gave me a pair of twenties for gas to get home. My nostrils flared.
I drove south. The sky was cornflower blue, crisp, and cloudless. I had hours left alone in the truck. I thought about spending the next two weeks in Jordan’s cabin taking care of his puppy and editing the novel I’d finished writing the week before. The road was clean and clear, smooth and gray. Pine trees bordered the lakes symmetrically. Alaska, if you’ve never been, is either an architectural nightmare (industrial and functional-forward), wobbly houses, New Money, or OH MY GOD THIS PLACE IS GORGEOUS—a national park disguised as a state.
It was sunny. I was in heaven.
The road veered right around a corner and then down a hill and onto a section that was left untouched by the sun that day—covered in shadows and shade, the asphalt morphed into a sea of black ice.
I’d been driving the speed limit, about 50 miles per hour, when the back of the pickup started fishtailing. I grew up and learned how to drive in Buffalo and had plenty of experience driving on ice, but this time was different. Something felt wrong.
Time stood still; the truck did not.
I remember feeling like the world was spinning around me, inside the truck, as random spots in the door and windshield dented inward, around me. The horizon pirouetted without end. Shattered glass appeared out of nowhere, rotating alongside me in the cabin.
I tried bracing myself by holding my left hand in front of me, but at some point the bones in my wrist popped out of the skin. The truck rolled over five times before coming to rest on its side in a large snowbank off the side of the road, between two small towns in the middle of nowhere, in Alaska.
At some point, a man named Cameron spotted the truck and dialed 911, but the road to the nearest hospital was so icy that help didn’t arrive for over a half hour.
I spent well over 30 minutes on the side of a road, with broken bones, covered in snow, trapped by a truck, trying to ignore the bones sticking out of my left wrist. Blood trickled down the right side of my face, spotting the snow red. My head ached. Things were blurry. “WE’VE GOT TO GET HER OUT OF THERE,” I eventually heard someone yell. I remember throwing up in a helicopter. After the tiny hospital, I’d been airlifted right back to Anchorage, where an orthopedic surgeon quickly went to work on my wrist.
One large pin stuck out of my left wrist for months afterwards to line up the hardware inside. The orthopedic surgeon used the word “shattered” quite a bit, estimating that I’d broken it in over 13 places before he fused it with a plate and six screws.
My head was aching because I’d fractured my skull. A huge black mass kept appearing on the CAT scans, half of my brain covered in blood. After waiting for two days to see if it would go away on its own, surgeons removed a subdural hematoma, a coagulated blood clot that was putting substantial pressure on the inside of my skull. They’d drilled holes in my skull to suction out the blood, which didn’t work because my blood had thickened to “the consistency of raspberry preserves,” so they cut out a part of my skull, removed the blood, and fused my skull back together with more metal.
Without health insurance—I was stupid, young, on a budget, and didn’t even know how that would have worked—I quickly accumulated over $200,000 of medical bills.
After brain surgery, I couldn’t spend more than a few minutes reading without getting a headache. My attention span vanished. I couldn’t even read a page of the book I’d just finished writing. Both the hand I used for writing and the brain I used for thinking were suddenly rendered inoperable. I couldn’t think or write, the very things that made me me.
I was always tired and everything was loud. I spent the next few months watching Conan O’Brien on Vicodin on my mother’s couch in California. Leaving home invited stares from strangers taking in my bandaged, shaved head. My mother, a nurse, tried to comfort me by saying that I was fine compared to her patients and that my problems were in my head. I was desperate to see a doctor, but couldn’t make an appointment to see anyone because in the pre-Obama Care world, my wrist/skull/brain injuries were deemed pre-existing conditions that allowed insurance companies to reject my applications.
My mother suggested that I could check myself into a psychiatric ward if I really wanted to see a doctor. So I did. Meanwhile, my friend Jordan kept calling and asking me to pay the deductible for his car insurance.
Two months after making a brief, unexpected appearance at the hospital in Anchorage, my father called. He spent the first fifteen minutes discussing his job and girlfriend before asking: “so, how did that whole accident thing turn out?”
“Not great. I have to declare bankruptcy, but I don’t even know how I’m going to afford a lawyer.”
“Wow… that sucks,” he said, five minutes before hanging up; we wouldn’t speak again for 18 years.
And then he didn’t try to get in touch for over a year. And that, my friends, is one of the stories I tell when breaking in a new therapist.
Things You Learn When Shit Hits the Fan
You never truly know what other people have been through. Or are going through.
Life can change—and drastically!—at any moment. And it’s not because we make mistakes or put ourselves into dangerous situations, but due to the million life variables beyond our control; simply waking up means inviting entropy into our lives. Cue my recent post-insurance $900 bill for a mammogram.
Tomorrow is guaranteed to no one. You will not be the same person tomorrow. wake up as the same version of yourself—always be compassionate to the “today” version.
People deal with shitty situations in remarkably different and unpredictable ways. Those closest to you may throw tantrums, angry that the world they knew changed. Angry that you’ve changed. Angry that the world didn’t keep their people safe. They might disappear when they deem a situation to be beyond their control and feel helpless; their hiding is not a reflection of you, but a glimpse into their own personal narrative of shame, self-preservation, and revealed limits.
It’s not you, it’s them.
No one owes you anything. The universe gave you a back (maybe!) but doesn’t owe you a back rub. Wealthy lawyers and doctors are not obligated to offer their services for free. Parents are not obligated to develop emotional maturity. People are where they are, with their own rich lives that you know nothing about.
Kindness is a blessing when it arrives. No expectations; just gratitude.
Value your time. It is precious. Other people will think nothing of using it up unless you advocate for yourself in the moment.
The world is made for dominant groups and the able-bodied. We are all temporarily abled, guaranteed to experience one limiting illness or disability in our lives. Living in L.A. with a shaved, bandaged head and cast on my arm meant I was the recipient of the stares. It’s made me understand how much a moment of kindness, of not staring, of treating someone like a human being, means to those dealing with more while having less energy and resources to do so. Hold the door open, don’t stare, and remember: it’s none of your business.
No matter what happens, just remember: it’ll make a good story someday. Bankruptcy is temporary; good times, too.
Everything in life has a tradeoff. After brain surgery, I often told people that the accident aged me 20 years, overnight, because I couldn’t do mental math as quickly and began to forget words, mid-sentence. Those negatives came a newfound appreciation and gratitude for life—but now that it’s been 20 years, I can safely say that being 40 does not automatically grant you an appreciation for life.
What’s the worst that could happen?
Would you be lying alone in a snow-covered ditch with a skull fracture? For well over 30 minutes? You’d survive. You’d have a good story. It might fuck things up in the short-term, but it wouldn’t define you forever.
Which is why I’ve made January 31st my special day to slow down and savor. To reflect and appreciate the miracle of simply being alive.
Finding catharsis for anger & fear
It’s easy to have perspective after 20 years. In the meantime, what the fuck do you do when shit hits the fan? This year, my personal journey is about resilience and rebuilding: after systems fail you; after an accident; after a major disappointment; after someone you considered to be a friend stops returning messages when you’re no longer useful; after you get dumped; when your body still feels the effects of a toxic boss; when a mentor of many years dumps you because of a single email you sent to his brother out of concern (!); when you don’t have health insurance and find yourself scrambling to navigate through the nightmare of our health care system and legal system after having brain surgery; when life continues to reveal itself as unfair.
Because life is both fair and unfair. It’s nonlinear and unpredictable. Sometimes you work the day of your grandmother’s funeral for someone, and then get dumped because of a single email. Maybe you emailed that person years later when you were severely depressed and wanted a reference letter for graduate school and they don’t bother responding. Maybe, just for shits and giggles, you volunteer to help a friend with a huge passion project for months, only to get tossed out of the group because you are too overwhelmed with life and miss a few meetings. Maybe you asked for five minutes of help in return for your countless hours of help—and instead of that, you get a very long email detailing your errors.
You can’t “positive vibes only!” your way out of trauma or anger. But you can reframe, find community, and find a healthy outlet for that energy. BECAUSE FUCK THEM.
The Devil Uses PowerPoint
I’m going to be writing a short, satirical novel, that is in no way based on my experiences—The Devil Uses PowerPoint—and would love to have others join me! I’ll be hosting weekly coworking sessions for members, decided by a poll. It’ll be small, unrecorded, and lawyers can’t touch me. It will be for paid members only, which means that it will be cozy and gossipy and I’m really excited.
AND IT’LL BE FUNNY.
“There’s no better survival instinct,” Catherine O’Hara told Parade. “You’re so lucky if you’re raised with it. It’s one of God’s greatest gifts, because life is full of the dark and the light. You gotta look for the light.”
Thank you for being here during 2026, the year of rebuilding!
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Karla Starr (@karlastarr) is the coauthor of Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers. Her first book, Can You Learn to Be Lucky? Why Some People Seem to Win More Often Than Others, was a Fast Company book of the year. She also writes The Starr Report, which you are reading the very end of.
I love it! Happy Anniversary !!
Wow, the bit about desperately wanting to see some Ottoman architecture after months of Alaskan snow, while you were just 21 and so focused on your novel, totally resonatd with me; thanks for this peek into your early writing life, it's realy cool to read about that kind of determination.