A New(ish) Weapon Against OCD Fidget Syndrome

At any number of events, you can see me darting around all over the place, taking pictures with my Android phone. The obvious reason is that I want to capture the special events in life. But it has also become a good weapon against what I call OCD Fidget Syndrome.

Mood music:

I’ve mentioned the fidgeting before. A byproduct of my OCD is a serious discomfort with sitting properly for any length of time. One way I manage it is by putting my feet up on the desk when I work, which for some reason helps me minimize the bobbing and weaving. There’s also the windmill hands. Those who know me well have seen it at one time or another, usually when I’m sitting at a desk engaged in a project. My face gets slightly contorted and I start shaking my hands around like they’re on fire.

Taking pictures gives me a positive outlet for all that nervous energy. But I’m no professional. For that you have to talk to my sister-in-law Amanda or my friend Kevin Littlefield. I just mess around with the phone camera. But lately I’ve gotten more brazen about it.

Now I’m experimenting with all the nifty free camera apps available in the Android Marketplace.

My favorite is Retro Camera, which gives every image a rustic glaze. It was a life-saver earlier this month when Sean and I were camping in the driving rain. Sitting under a tent can be bad for my fidgeting ways, but the camera helped:

I also used the app to take one of my profile pictures. 

In this one, I took Retro Camera into the bathroom  and put the phone behind my head as I stared in the mirror:

Here’s one of Sean reading in a tree out back, also taken with Retro Camera:

I recently discovered some other apps that allow all kinds of craziness for the less-than-average photographer. There’s the Camera Illusion and Photo Illusion apps that let you take pictures that look like pencil drawings and infrared images. I’ve gone nuts with that one, as the following snaps show:

For this one I used the emboss effect, which didn’t make me any less ugly. But it was still a fun experiment.

Nothing special. But it beats fidgeting.