I grew up in Sacramento, close enough to the delta that summers meant a specific kind of heavy river humidity nobody who hasn’t lived there believes exists in California, and I figured I’d stay, the way you figure things at twenty three without really examining the figuring. Then a friend of a friend mentioned a data center out past Reno was hiring for entry-level network operations, decent pay, real benefits, and I drove out for the interview mostly to see if I could, more than because I actually expected to take it.
The tour is what got me, oddly, and not in a good way at first. My interviewer walked me through the floor and I remember realizing, somewhere around the second row of racks, that there wasn’t a single window in the entire building, that the whole structure was designed around not letting outside light or outside temperature anywhere near the equipment, and something about that specific detail lodged itself in me uncomfortably. I remember thinking, I don’t know if I can do this, work inside something built to actively exclude the outside world for eight, ten, sometimes twelve hours a night.
I took the job anyway, mostly because Sacramento didn’t have much else lined up and pride only gets you so far in your twenties before rent wins the argument. The first few months were rough in exactly the way I’d worried about, that windowless feeling followed me home, made my apartment feel like an extension of the floor rather than a break from it. What actually fixed it, and I didn’t see this coming at all, was the desert itself, the fact that fifteen minutes outside town in almost any direction gets you somewhere with more visible sky than anywhere I’d ever lived, more stars than Sacramento’s light pollution ever let through. The building has no windows. The town it sits in has, functionally, the biggest window I’ve ever had access to, you just have to drive to it.
I go back to Sacramento a couple times a year, see my sister, eat at the same taco place I’ve been going to since I was a teenager, and it’s good, it’s still home in the way a place you grew up in always half is. But I drive back into the desert afterward without dreading it anymore, which took longer than I expected and arrived quieter than I expected, no specific moment I can point to, just one day noticing the dread wasn’t there anymore and hadn’t been for a while.