A fidget bracelet (AKA I don’t know what to write again)

Today, I thought I’d talk about fidgeting, and about what I’ve been doing to help myself fidget less obviously and focus more. But first, some updates: the Birthday Dice Bag is not on Ravelry yet, because Ravelry doesn’t think Bardic Wizard is a designer name, despite the Papagena Shawl going up just fine. Also, the Ensign of the Week redesign continues to be postponed until I have a playtest group to work some things out (hasn’t happened yet). 

Anyways. Fidgeting is something that I do unconsciously. If I’m not doing something with my hands, I can’t keep my mind on what I’m doing. 

When I was young, I didn’t know very much about showing that I was listening, and I would always look distracted, no matter how much of the conversation I could repeat back from memory. Even before we went into a giant global pandemic, I tended to have my current crochet or knitting project in my bag at all times, so I’d always have something to do. But whenever I pulled it out, I tended to get reprimanded by whoever was talking to me, because I didn’t look like I was paying attention. I was paying attention, it just doesn’t look like it when the person talking to me wants me to make eye contact and show I’m listening. 

This is something that’s interesting about society; we want people to show that they’re listening to us, but almost everyone I know has a hard time sitting still and looking interested. 

I went into the pandemic figuring that virtual meetings would be great. Nobody would tell me not to crochet under my desk, because nobody could see it! But here’s the thing I learned. No matter how well someone hides what they’re doing, it’s still clear that they’re doing something. And it still leads to reprimands, just less private ones, so I stopped playing with yarn.

For a while, I doodled a lot on whatever paper was nearby. I still do that, because it’s relatively socially acceptable to doodle. It looks a little like taking notes, which is acceptable in meetings, and it can be done while not looking at the paper. But I don’t really like to doodle, because I have a hard time with the graphomotor skills for writing or drawing. And for a little more time, I tried just keeping a cats cradle loop in my hands and weaving it in and out of my fingers, which I can do without looking. Although I didn’t need to look at it to use it as a fidget, other people noticed it and were distracted, so I stopped using it. 

This leads me to today, and what I’ve been using for the last couple months, since the world’s started to open up again. I spin, and because I just started recently, I have a lot of random short bits of yarn that I practiced various techniques on. I found a piece of orange yarn (2 ply wool, about worsted weight or a bit more) that I’d spun and was long enough to fit around my wrist. I strung on 5 pony beads (those thick plastic ones with the big holes) and tied the bracelet around my wrist, tight enough that it won’t fall off or slip down my wrist.

Because the beads are free to move on the string, I can fiddle with them, moving them around or pushing them to different places on the string. I can do this by feel, so I don’t have to look at it, and I can do this whenever I want, since it’s not going to come off randomly. Plus, nobody else is distracted by it, since the beads are plastic and not loud when they move. 

I think this was a good solution to my problem of finding a useful fiddle for meetings, since it fits my needs and doesn’t bother other people. What do you think about fidgeting?