I had planned (and even started) to write something nice and optimistic about glitter and creating with it as a material \u2014 to sum up the past year and share a bit of what I hope the new year will bring.<\/p>\n\n
I wrote and erased again and again, and honestly, like glitter, everything just flew away in the air, got into my eyes, blurred my vision, and made me tear up. At the same time, it didn\u2019t leave me and is still stuck in my head, because that\u2019s how glitter likes to behave. I believe I\u2019ll come back to it later because I really love glitter, and luckily, I encounter it a lot in my clinic (and at home too \u2014 which isn\u2019t always fun but I try).<\/p>\n\n
So, 2018 began. It\u2019s not too late, but it already feels different. I\u2019m in a different place, not just because New Year\u2019s Eve passed (I even went out to celebrate with my husband for the first time in\u2026 I won\u2019t say how long, on New Year\u2019s Eve! And it was fun, actually!), but mainly because a lot has changed in a short time, external changes that led to internal ones. At the center of it all: a new, thrilling job, different from anything I\u2019ve done before; alongside continuing my private practice, I will also have the chance to nurture a very young unit combining art and therapy at the Ashdod Museum of Art.<\/p>\n\n
I\u2019m not a big fan of extremes. You could say \u2014 I\u2019m actually pretty scaredy-cat (right now, all my family and childhood friends reading this are saying, \u201cPssh! Very scaredy-cat indeed!\u201d). I\u2019ve avoided a lot of things because I was afraid \u2014 of the unknown, of being far from home, of failure (because clearly, if we don\u2019t succeed fully \u2014 it\u2019s failure, right? Sometimes it feels like there\u2019s no middle ground).<\/p>\n\n
Also, loss of control scares me a lot, helplessness too, getting stuck. Many things, really.<\/p>\n\n
Last week, I watched an episode from the new season of Black Mirror. For those who don\u2019t know it \u2014 I highly recommend checking it out. Until then: it\u2019s a series that explores the impact of technology on our lives in the future, in a mix of speculative fiction and realism (it depicts technologies mostly not yet existing, but that make you think, \u201cWe\u2019re probably almost there.\u201d) It mainly deals with alienation, changing human relationships, and each person\u2019s relation to the world. It\u2019s tense, shocking, scary, and highly recommended \u2014 though I admit it has caused many sleepless nights.<\/p>\n\n
Anyway \u2014 the episode I saw dealt with a mother and her daughter. After a traumatic event in which the daughter disappeared from her mother\u2019s sight for several minutes, the mother turns to an innovative institute that implants a brain chip in the girl, allowing the mother to see the world through her daughter\u2019s eyes \u2014 literally. The mother connects via an iPad to software that shows her the daughter\u2019s viewpoint, monitors her health, reports her geographic location, and many other features.<\/p>\n\n
Among other things, the mother can control what the daughter\u2019s senses receive: at the push of a button, she can blur frightening or upsetting elements \u2014 like the parental controls we have today on screens to block inappropriate content for kids \u2014 but for real life. If the daughter encounters something scary, the mother receives signals of physiological distress and can pixelate the view or lower the volume of what the child experiences. Thus, a protected child grows up, surrounded by cotton wool, shielded from unpleasant stimuli, constantly monitored by the mother.<\/p>\n\n
Sounds like a dream, right? Well\u2026 I won\u2019t spoil the rest, watch and see.<\/p>\n\n