I have quite a few random things I do without even thinking about it. Some could be bad, some could just be weird, and some I don’t notice when I do them, only after.
- Chewing Fingernails. This is one of the bad ones. I can’t remember a time in my life where I haven’t had the bad habit of chewing on the skin on the end of my fingers and completely obliterating the nails with my teeth. I’ve tried to stop god-knows-how-many times, but it has never worked. I remember one time, my parents bought a special nail serum thing (yay, chemicals) that tasted horrible so I could stop chewing. Surprise, surprise, it didn’t work at all. I would still chew and got used to the smell and taste (I honestly don’t even know if it was non-toxic, but I’m still alive. Note: Nail polish stinks bad), or I would pick or peel off the serum and just continue destroying my nails. It’s bad because when I chew on the skin, too. Sometimes, it’ll run up the side of my nail and I’ll chew it off, and then it’ll hurt like heck for a few days. I go down so many layers of skin that it gets red and I can’t feel the ends of my fingers sometimes. I’m able to grow out my nails, but they’re fragile and break off, or I chew them off subconsciously, but I feel like I really need to stop picking at the skin around my nails, too. I feel bad because I get hang nails and roughly all my fingers look like brittle leaves in fall on the ends, and I can’t paint my nails either, because I’ll just chew at them and peel off the polish (It is satisfying, but I wish I didn’t have such an impulse to do it).
- Loud music. If you’ve seen some of my recent blogs, you’ll know I blare any loud song I love on speakers all night long (Not really, I’d get kicked out for being such an annoying pain in the butt). This is actually really good for my mental health, and I feel like it helps me ignore people I don’t like and it helps me concentrate so much (I know, it probably wouldn’t work for other people if they like quiet places for reading or working). This is bad because sometimes when I listen to it, it’s around people I actually like and am not too bothered by, and I feel like I’d make a bad impression with them if I’m having a whole mental metal concert and ignoring them when I don’t mean to. Also, radiation from earbuds or speakers and loud noises right in your earhole can be very damaging for your hearing (I advise not doing as I do. Monkey see, Monkey learn). And, just to add to me becoming deaf at 13 and ignoring everyone around me as a coping mechanism (Not really, it’s easy for me to talk to people), I also get lost in my own mind and zone out completely, making it harder for people to get my attention when I’m not listening. This doesn’t really happen, and when it does, it isn’t during synchronous learning times or during instructions, but rather when someone talks to me in the car or the bus, and I just sit like a statue with disintegrating eardrums.
- This brings me to three. Sometimes when I listen to music, I zone off and stare at something random. I usually catch on to this one a lot, and look away from people or focus on something like drawing or writing (new hobby I could talk about, too), but sometimes I feel like I’m just staring into people’s souls like a creep across the room, or like I’m just drifting off into my own fantasy world and sitting like a psycho going crazy. Sometimes I’ll get too invested in looking at something that’s not a human that I forget what I’m looking at and have to try and convince myself that I’m a human and not a robot being controlled. Like if I focus on trees, I’ll feel like someone put me into that position and I’ll get too focused on how many lines are on a branch and that seem to overlap from the POV, and I’ll forget to do what I’m supposed to be doing or that it’s kind of weird to sit still for a while doing absolutely nothing.
- Writing. This is probably one of the best habits I could have and actually stick to. Here’s a fun fact; I never really write, only for assignments and I get hand cramps 3.5 words in. I’m not talking about typing up random fanfiction on your phone or computer, but actually taking a notebook and pen or pencil and writing down all your feelings or something you like, or anything, for that matter. When I write about nothing in particular in a notebook, I never get cramps (Odd, I know) and I can write and write and write for 3 hours solid, especially when I have a good idea on my hands. I never really wrote in a notebook until about a week or so ago, but since then, I filled out roughly 80 pages in a roughly half a printer-page of paper size sheet notebook, so 40 full sheets of that full of writing. I feel confident in it and even when I get stuck at something, in a story or whatever, I can use my highly-intelligent 1,000,000 IQ brain (Que the sarcasm, I am intelligent, though) to find a way around my problem. Now, when I say I never really write, I meant it, but when I start writing now, you can’t stop me. I’ll write a solid 20 pages double-sided in one night and happen to finish it off just the way I wanted with no mess ups. This isn’t a flex, but I like how I picked up this habit a week ago and I feel a lot better with something I like doing and can do confidently, in the same row as drawing or insert other hobbies here.
I’m pretty sure that’s all I have right now, but if you wanted to see more, I’m sorry. At least I’m not the one who spent 5 or more minutes reading a 1000+ word list on the blog of a teenager.