Instead of biting my nails or playing with a fidget toy, is there a skill I can learn/practice?
Like rolling a pen/coin through my fingers or something like that.
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Lockpicking maybe? Just recently got into it as a bucket list hobbies but it’s actually really entertaining. They sell practice cutaway locks that fit easily in one hand as you fidget about with the lock picks.
Whenever I have my lockpicks and a few padlocks available, I end up picking nonstop while doing things like watching youtube
You can get training locks where the back of each cylinder unscrews so you can put in as many or as few pins as you want, and try it again with different pinning each time.
Yup! Thats like the one I have from Sparrows. I got their Tuxedo Reloaded set and it comes with all sorts of driver pins and keys to setup yourself.
That’s what stimming is for, kid!
Stimming is a natural source of the “try mind” zen practitioners speak of. Do a perfect impression of Jon Stewart. Why? Why?? Hell no there’s no why.
I drum with my fingers. The first time I picked up a tabla someone was pissed that I got it “immediately”. No! That’s the result of hundreds of hours of practice.
Stimming is a fusion reactor in the autistic mind, just waiting to be hooked up to something useful. We can practice a task orders of magnitude more than most people can, because we literally can’t get tired of it.
If nothing else, go play some music. Stimming with music is how culture began. Somebody’s gotta drag these numbskulls through their passivity to new levels of beauty. Stimming is the hacksaw that cuts the prison bars shoddy workmanship.
After I quit smoking, I wanted to do something with my hands so I bit my nails until it hurt.
Crochet was/ is something I can do with my hands and at the end I get a cool hat or a nice scarf. Yarn gets expensive, tho.
My most frequent stim for YEARS involves me playing along doing saxophone fingerings to whatever music I’m listening to or is stuck in my head. So, maybe a wind instrument!
+1 for almost any instrument
I learned to count to 31 on 1 hand using binary. I’ve gotten more than a few free drinks via bar bets with that skill lol.
Was it a bar at a software companies happy hour?
Who would bet a drink against your ability to count in binary?
Who would bet a drink against your ability to count in binary?
Shit talking and making odd claims about talents are a good way to pass the time drinking in bars with strangers/acquaintances.
That’s… Barely a skill
It’s a little over 30
Chisanbop or chisenbop (from Korean chi (ji) finger + sanpŏp (sanbeop) calculation 지산법/指算法), sometimes called Fingermath, is a finger counting method used to perform basic mathematical operations.
You might be already doing this. If you strum your fingers of your right hand by pressing your index, middle, ring, and pinky to your desktop, and then do the same thing again starting with your thumb, you’ve just counted from 0 to 9. Do the same on your left hand and you’ve gone from 00 to 90. It’s really easy to do simple math this way by counting on your fingers.
For stimming purposes, you might just start by counting up or counting down, then maybe counting up by twos or counting down by threes.
This is the approach that I’ve known for many decades now. I’ve seen YouTube videos of kids doing amazing fast calculations like multiplying large numbers using what looks like a different method in that their hands are in the air. I’ll leave it to you to Google the other approaches if this direction interests you.
Absolutely knitting or crocheting. It’s very soothing.
Maybe knitting?
I second knitting, and its 100% something you can do while watching tv without needing to devote much concentration, its almost subconscious once your going.
While I’m unfamiliar with your condition, it seems simple magic tricks, like having a playing card appear in your hand from thin air (when it was actually just well hidden) and making it disappear again.
I’ve gotten pretty good at rolling a pen through my fingers just through fidgeting over the past twenty years. So it’s definitely possible!
Begleri is a cool skill toy
Balisongs are cool too
Look into flow arts! There’s something for everyone, and it’s great exercise!
Also for those who don’t feel like Googling it: flow arts include juggling, spinning, baton/staff/whatever spinning, fan dance (?), and more.
TIL there’s a general term for that.
Wouldn’t the coin on the knuckles thing count?
Coin on the knuckles is tangential but not usually considered flowarts, which is usually more of a whole body activity. However it’s close enough that I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw someone showing off at a gathering. Similar to like hackeysack or balisong (butterfly knife).
Flow is also a gateway to fire performance, aerials, acrobatics, and other circus arts
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Compulsive skin picking for those who don’t want to have to Google it.
Think you just answered your own question.
Seriously though, coin rolling is great for dexterity and you can move on to some simple slight of hand magic
Archery
Manager: “So, welcome to our office, you’ll be working her…” Arrows flies between him and his interlocutor
New hire: “WHAT THE…”
Manager:“Oh right, watch out for Stimmy Jimmy, he shoots arrows all over the place, helps him focus.”
