I managed to update my schedule for the week, print it out and turn the computer off again; eight minutes in total. While I was at it, I checked the graph of my screen time; it’s still a bit high for my liking, but it’s dropped considerably, from five hours a day to three hours and fifty-six minutes, so four. Come to think of it, I wonder if this program, which I made myself, has an error in the process it uses to calculate the average. We’re eight days into October, and if my average is four hours a day, the total number of hours should be thirty-two. However, quickly adding up the number of hours each day gave me a total of twenty-four, which should mean an average of three hours a day rather than four. And now here I am, writing about the world of the computer as a way of overcoming my withdrawal symptoms. The world of the computer is even appearing in my dreams; before waking up this afternoon, I dreamed repeatedly about a particular operation in Visual Basic. It involved one line of a program that was meant to delete a file when I ran it. But the line contained a contradiction, because right there within it was a command to recreate the same file. I ran that line, or that program which consisted of a single line, over and over again, and I was always amazed when nothing changed. I couldn’t find where in that line the second command was, the one which invalidated the first. I realise now that, in the dream, I wasn’t trying to change the line because deep down I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to delete the file, and I’d probably added the second command just in case I regretted what the first command had done. This is surely a sign from the highest part of my unconscious, showing me that my ambivalence about something is making me ineffective or, worse, making me waste my energy repeating, over and over, some contradictory actions that don’t change anything, don’t lead anywhere and are therefore completely pointless. I’ll sit down and have a go at analysing this message soon. [...]