Unlike for Shira and Nelly, no one was waiting for me in the south. To be honest, it was a comforting realization. I thought that at first I’d spend most of my time herding sheep, connecting to nature or something like that. But after two days I realized that Nabil, the Bedouin worker who tended to the farm, did everything much better than I ever could. I only got in his way with my silly questions. So after a week of dragging my feet, I decided Nelly was right, that it actually was a good opportunity to start working on my app. I had gotten the idea for it when I was still working for the last start-up; one of the employees at the office had said his dream was to buy a Ferrari, but he had no idea how to even start saving up for it. It got me thinking there could be an app that helped people realize their dreams. You’d type in the thing you wanted most—a Ferrari, a house in Petah Tikva, a monthlong trip to Japan—and the software would calculate your odds of fulfilling that dream based on data such as the price, your salary, and current expenses. And not only would it evaluate the odds, it would also provide an estimated time frame and suggest the necessary steps toward getting that Jet Ski you had always wanted. It would recommend small changes to your spending habits, such as canceling your gym membership that was just a waste of money, or skipping a vacation in Greece. Every so often, the app would even recommend more significant life changes. For example, weighing the possibility of quitting your job as a high school teacher against cashing in on your charisma as a real estate agent. Because values are nice, but then you have only a 4 percent chance of being the proud owner of a Ferrari.

I started spending a few hours a day working on my idea, running market research to see if a similar product already existed, making phone calls to people who could help me get started, trying to write a rudimentary code for the software. I can’t say exactly what I did, but I can say it took up most of my time. When I think back on that period, it feels like a faded, dragged-out dream devoid of clear actions. The only thing I remember clearly is that other than working on the app, once a day, a little before sunset, I’d climb up the hill behind the farm and look at the lights coming on across the Mitzpe below.