How to survive a typical summer day in Tucson:

1. Find the room in your house most shaded by outside foliage
2. Close all windows to ensure an air-tight seal, close the extra-thick UV-blocking curtains to curtail sunrays
3. Lower the thermostat to approximately 40F
4. Turn on all ceiling fans, portable fans, desk fans, tower fans, pedestal fans, bladeless fans, and make sure you have extra batteries nearby for your handheld fan
5. Change into a bikini
6. Sit inside the prepared shaded, fanned, ACed room
7. Wait
8. Wait
9. Wait
10. Wait until nighttime, at which point you may choose to decrease the thermostat by 2–5 degrees

There ya have it — a comprehensive guide to making the most of a hot summer Sonoran day, according to the majority Tucson residents. For reasons I’ve never understood, most people *despise* summers in Tucson. They detest the hot oven fumes that no amount of man-made cool air can combat, they loathe the piercing sun rays that have given my father skin cancer once twice three times. The heat is known to kill, but for me, it heals. It strengthens and empowers and fuels me. I whip on my bikini and smirk at the AC unit, choosing instead to lay outside on the hot tiles, drinking in the rays like a cold-blood, baking. I like to think of myself as Superman — I’d like to fly as close to the sun as I could simply to rejuvenate.

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So it’s no wonder I find myself drawn to Namibia. Not an ounce of fear of heatstroke has entered my soul . 104 degrees? HA! I’ve survived 110+, my friends. Namibia will have to try much harder than that to scare (or hurt?) this girl.

Of course, this is an extremely unhealthy attitude to have. Overexposure to such conditions is undeniably dangerous — as I know well, the sun lathers you with cancer. Its rays actually mutate the DNA within your poor cells, permanently damaging them and leading to tumor development. It’s quite the curse. But that knowledge has never even been enough to scare me into wearing sunscreen, or sunglasses, or hats, or long-sleeved clothing to protect my largest organ.

I’m always proud to say I’m from Arizona, and that I know what real heat is like, and heck yeah those tan lines and blonde streaks in my hair were all bestowed upon me by Ra (the Egyptian sun god) himself. But how incredibly naïve of me, to be proud of physical proof that I’ve been cooked, bleached, zapped by our world’s most powerful energy source. What I am showing off is not love, but neglect of my own well-being.

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My single father raised my younger sister and me in the suburbs of Tucson. During our long, empty summers at home, he’d throw us in the pool all day and tell us to go wild. We’d spend hours swimming and scamping about outside, or hiking and climbing mesquite trees. There was no “Put on your sun screen, kids!” or “You’ve been outside long enough — time to come in!” There was just boredom that the outside world was very good at addressing, and not a care in the world about my health.

I think I know what heat is.

I think I know what desert is.

I think I know how to best protect myself.

Namibia is about to challenge these “thinks.” This travel is truly a chance at revolutionizing how I interact with my favorite element. I’ll be right back in a desert so reminiscent of home, but I hope to handle it with so much more intelligence. Running around exposed in Tucson, I was comfortable — maybe I got cocky. In Namibia, a whole new world that I plan on treating with the utmost care, hopefully I will simultaneously feel compelled to treat myself with the best care as well.

From travel you can derive experiences that will forever change your life. It’s only too easy to live a molded day-to-day in which you completely acknowledge your repetitive behaviors and do absolutely nothing to change them. I dare you to think of what dirty habit you consistently practice that you could change with a switch as easy as a click of a mouse, and ask yourself why you haven’t already, and what it would take for you to make that switch.

This issue of learning to incorporate something as simple as slathering on sun screen may sound trivial, and maybe shouldn’t require an excursion to the African West coast. But I think it’s representative of every deadly habit in our life that we practice knowing full well what is required of us to change, and yet only doing so when we are uprooted and forced to actually implement a switch.

I really do want to start wearing a protective coat all over my body that can sustain UV light, sunglasses to protect my corneas, hats to hold my vulnerable scalp. Old habits die hard — even though I clearly know what’s good and bad for me, I don’t own any sunscreen, sunglasses, or caps. But sitting here writing this, I’m tempted to pull up my Amazon Prime account and change that now.

And yet, I won’t.

Not yet.