All this self dot is making me...

[Kevin Dahlhausen]

>Calling this parameter "self" is just convention, you can use whatever
>you like. However, it's a convention that just about everybody follows,
>so I'd think twice before doing something different.

A couple of options come to mind:

Or call it something short - s. ? - and use a (careful) global search and
replace when  you're done with the coding.    I sometimes use this
for long identifiers.  

Or in VIM set up a mapping:
 :map! s. self.