The contortion required to get your pinkie up to escape versus just pressing caps lock is pretty significant. Some people say that they get “vim pinkie” RSI as a result of making that awkward movement, the same as Emacs pinkie on Ctrl in the bottom left.
I just checked - I'm actually using my left ring finger instead of my pinkie for some reason.
I thought about that, I have it mapped to CTRL. I also have the muscle memory to reach for the ESC.
Did you have it mapped this way on a previous computer?
Not really, I used ^C as an alternative to Esc for a while. Sadly, ^C isn't entirely the same as pressing Esc or ^] .