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.
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.
This is a great idea! Lock picking is fun and super impressive to laymen (haha).
Just don’t tell anyone but your closest, most trusted friends (haha). Also, tell them to keep it a secret! Why? So your neighbor doesn’t knock on your door at 2AM because they locked themselves out of their apartment.
Also, you don’t need cutaway locks! They’re neat toys but nothing more. What you really need is a variety of locks to play with.
Head to your local hardware store and pick up a bunch of cheap locks. Or just ask friends if they have any old padlocks they’re not using (most people will have one or two).
True, cutaway locks aren’t needed. I recently heard of a neat idea where you can call around various storage businesses and ask if they have cut locks from people who lost their unit. It won’t be useful to lock anything but great for practice. Unfortunately the one near me throws theirs away regularly so I need to call around more to see what I can find.
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.
Not a useful skill, but you could try speedcubing
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.
Absolutely knitting or crocheting. It’s very soothing.