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.
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
Shuffling cards, rubix cube, ukulele, traveling coin,
Look into flow arts! Thereβs something for everyone, and itβs great exercise!
Also for those who donβt feel like Googling it: flow arts include juggling, spinning, baton/staff/whatever spinning, fan dance (?), and more.
TIL thereβs a general term for that.
Wouldnβt 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 itβs close enough that I wouldnβt 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
Lockpicking maybe? Just recently got into it as a bucket list hobbies but itβs actually really entertaining. They sell practice cutaway locks that fit easily in one hand as you fidget about with the lock picks.
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.
This is a great idea! Lock picking is fun and super impressive to laymen (haha).
Just donβt tell anyone but your closest, most trusted friends (haha). Also, tell them to keep it a secret! Why? So your neighbor doesnβt knock on your door at 2AM because they locked themselves out of their apartment.
Also, you donβt need cutaway locks! Theyβre 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 theyβre not using (most people will have one or two).
True, cutaway locks arenβt 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 wonβt 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.
Drumming
Related: get a Digitakt or Syntakt from Elektron and make music while you stim with clicky buttons π€©
