Sometimes, I wake up and think, I hope something goes really wrong today.

Something that would completely uproot the smooth road of mindless routines; that would announce itself screeching, “HEY! STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING!” and then create a thrilling disaster. An enormous speed bump, if you will.

My favourite chess games are the ones where I’ve made a spectacular blunder in the opening but claw back to victory. These chaotic games are much more exciting than the close ones, where all pieces are traded down to a quiet draw.

Similarly, my favourite journal entries to read are those written during a difficult time. The dark and fiery emotions that emerge uniquely from a disaster make the resolution so much sweeter.

I’ll admit, the disaster sucks when you’re dealing with it; you wish it would just go away and leave you alone. But the peace afterwards, where you come out scarred and burnt and collapse on a bed, are truly magical.

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows has a word for this: lachesism:

n. the desire to be struck by disaster—to survive a plane crash, to lose everything in a fire, to plunge over a waterfall—which would put a kink in the smooth arc of your life, and forge it into something hardened and flexible and sharp, not just a stiff prefabricated beam that barely covers the gap between one end of your life and the other.