Disgusting Habits

Some of us have them, some don’t. As for me, I’ve been chewing my nails pretty much my whole life. I really don’t know how it started to be honest, but once it did, my fingers have never really been the same.

I tried that polish you put on them that tastes bad, but that didn’t even come close to stopping me. Basically you just get used to the foul taste and chew anyways. The thing is, most of the time it’s not even conscious, it’s just one of those things I end up doing while driving or sitting on the couch.

There are lots of famous nail biters, so I know I’m not alone. Elijah Wood (Frodo from Lord of the Rings) is pretty bad — if you look at some of the scenes where he’s twirling the ring in his fingers, he doesn’t have much nail left.

I’m going to make an effort to finally stop over the next little while. I know once I manage to grow them full length again that it’ll no longer be a problem, but getting to that point is going to be pretty difficult, mainly because I don’t even really notice myself doing it. But I haven’t really touched them in 36 hours or so, so I’m hoping to just keep distracting myself so that I don’t bite them.

I’ve been told you can’t break habits cold turkey from a psychological point of view — you can only replace one habit with another. So I’m going to replace it with something else, maybe reading, maybe snapping photos, or maybe cleaning. Just something to pass the time whenever my brain decides it needs to chew.

Here goes.