It’s August in (h)el Centro. I’ve survived nearly four months in the almost ugliest town I’ve ever seen. Not only is this place ugly, it’s hot. Not garden variety Phoenix hot, but HOT. Stifling, suffocating, steamy, putrid. The air alternately smells like rotting alfalfa hay and cow manure.

When I moved here – because this was the only place I could seem to land a paying job as a lawyer – I made a goal to do something interesting with my spare time. The spare time I would have in place of the social life I used to have in Santa Monica. Somehow, I have yet to began that task and have only managed to complain, sweat, get out of shape, and realize that 57K is still not enough money, even here in this shithole town.

But it has to happen, I can’t look back on my year here and realize that I gained nothing beyond marking time and hoping the economy returns to some semblance of functional. My goal, therefore, is to learn to love (h)el Centro – not just tolerate it but to love it. I read a story about a woman who was subjected to something utterly unlikable and learned to love it, just to cope. I can’t remember what that something was now, but I remember that I could not imagine learning to love the thing – the story made an impression. It made me think that if that person loved that horrible thing, then maybe I could learn to love this depressing place. Perhaps if I could learn to love something, even just one thing, then I could learn to be happy here.

I don’t know what that thing is yet.