#histiryblr

[the---hermit]

04|10|2024

Today my brain was not braining at all. Focusing on what I had to read and write in my notes was a struggle. The chapter was long, confused and made of too long sentences that did not help at all. This book is honestly making me doubt my abilities, and I don't like that. I feel very insecure about it at the moment.

productivity list:

read first thing in the morning

duolingo

continued reading and annotating the book I am studying

started reading and highlighting the list of important dates at the end of the book (since apparently that is the only way I can get a general overview of what the hell happened in the period the book is analizing)

continued working on my crochet project

📖:The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White (two chapters in and I am already underlining incredible quotes, I am so excited about finally reading this!!)

[the---hermit]

Recent read and my new pencilcase!

19|09|2024

I have been reading obsessively in the past few days, it seems to be the only thing working to make my brain shut up. When I am not listening to the lotr audiobook, I have my nose in a book. I have recently fallen in love with T. Kingfisher's horror novels, the contrast between these narrating voices that don't take themselves to seriosly and the unique horror elements of these books is exactly what I needed. I have also been reading the stories that have inspired these novel, rereading The Fall Of The House Of Usher after years put me in the perfect spooky season mood, and the fact that it's been raining makes it feel like it's autumn already. I also read for the first time Machen's The White People, which was a very interesting read after having read Kingfisher's novel. I have been doing a bit more uni planning, and I decided that next week is going to be my first week of proper studying. I still have to send a couple of emails and figure out a few things for a class, but those will be tasks for next week. Right now I did enough planning to have my brain be relaxed for the next few days. I am actually excited to start studying, even tho as usual the start of the semester hasn't been as smooth as I hoped for. Knowing I will be self studying for the first semester is actually quite comforting, and I feel good about finding a good balance between studying and taking care of myself. Actually starting to have approachable study goals might help my mental health right now because it will give me something material to focus on.

[the---hermit]

11|06|2024

My ability to focus and my motivation are still pretty low, but today was a bit better than yesterday. I did send my English lit paper, and I also started writing a few notes for the historical sources I have read in the past weeks. Yesterday I starte my second outlout review for my English lit exam, and hopefully I'll manage to finish that, and review everything one additional time. I am not feeling super confident about this, not because I don't know stuff, but because I don't know what to expect. I am so used to historical talk than the new topic makes me feel a bit insecure, but that might also be my tired brain being negative. I am still in a pretty big reading slump, and I have yet to find an audiobook to help me deal with it, but I am sure I'll get the inspiration for something one of these days. I just accepted that at the moment reading a physical book is impossible because it requires too much brainpower I don't have, and it's okay.

Today's productivity:

emailed my history lab prof

started writing notes for the historical sources before I work on the skeleton of the paper

continued my second outloud English lit review

[the---hermit]

25|09|2024

Today I started to properly read the main book I have to study for my history of the Sabaudian states exam, since yesterday I had only worked on the introduction, and I must say I hate the way it's written. There's two authors, so I hope the writing on the chapters by the second author will be better cause at the moment I am struggling. This book presents itself as an history of but goes straight into details jumping from one century to another without having created a sort of time table of events at all. It should focus on a period of time going from the 15th century to the mid 19th century, which means that there's a lot of geographical changes in these states, but since this chapter so fart jumps back and forth it's not even that easy to understand? I genuinely hope that they just fucked up the structure of the book and later on there will be clearer explaination of the geographical and political changes. It's definitely a harder start than I expected, maybe if I picked different materials to get back into my studying routine it would have been easier, but I'll make it work. I plan on finishing the first half of the first section of the book by the end of this week. In the afternoon I finally started putting in jars the herbs I have dried, but of course I didn't finish. I have also continued working on the sweater I am crocheting for my mom's birthday. It's the first time I make a garment for someone else, so I am a bit nervous, but hopefully it will turn out to be nice, and she'll like it.

productivity list:

read first thing in the morning

read and wrote notes for book

duolingo

crochet project

finished reading The Willows by A. H. Blackwood

[the---hermit]

30|08|2022

Thesis diary #42

I wasn't sure on whether to write a new thesis update yet, but I feel like it's better to do so since my work these past few days has been messy. So, what I have been doing is rereading a bunch of notes and articles in order to create a clear plan of all the informations I want to include in the first chapter of my thesis. I have a set of bullet points the professor gave me as a guide for what to include, and I am trying to make sense of all the informations I have gathered until now that could be useful. As I write down these lists of infomations I want to include, I am making sure I annotate the exact souce I got it from, to make things easier when writing. Yesterday I also started to read a book on the historiography of the witches' sabbath, that I thought might be useful for my thesis, but now I am doubting myself. I am not sure whether it will actually be useful and I should keep reading, or I should just keep it as a personal read in the future and concentrage all my energies into working with what I already got. I will consider what to do in these next few days. I am very close to finally get back to writing again, and I won't lie to you I am more nervous than the first time.

Productive things I did today:

continued rereading old notes to prepare the structure of the first chapter of my thesis

reread a couple of articles I didn't really remember that well

started organizing the infomation I have in the different sections of the chapter

reread my first draft of the first chapter of my thesis (with all the edits the professor made)

read a lot

practiced Irish on duolingo

Self care things I did today:

read first thing in the morning

journaled in the morning

payed attention to how much water I drank

avoided coffee

[the---hermit]

August cover page in my new bullet journal. I am very proud of how these new spreads turned out, so I'll be posting a few pictures of them in the next days.

28|07|2022

Today I:

read first thing in the morning

finished writing important informations on my new bullet journal

read and annotated an historiographical article

practiced Irish on duolingo

listened to an audiobook

Thesis diary #40

It's again been a while since my last proper thesis diary update, and I wanted to make another post before my holdays. In the past days I have found, read and annotated a few new historiographical articles. After the professor discussed with me the first chapter of my thesis, and decided to go for a totally different structure, I was left with some more reasearch to do. My goal is to find about whether or not there have been studies of witchcraft related to Italy in the 18th century. I haven't really been able to find a lot till now, just a few articles. Today I found another one, and since it wasn't too long I managed to read and annotate it fully. I will now put on hold this part of my work, since I am going on holiday for two weeks strating from this Saturday. I really need some rest, but I will still try to get something done while I am away. I am planning on working on another part of the material I gathered on my last trip to the archive. I have some documents which were written particularly well so they should be a little easier to deal with. I plan on studying at least one hour each day while I am away, but then to just rest and enjoy myself, because I really need a break from everything. I'll then plan my next moves once I'll be back home.

📖: It by Stephen King, Treasure Island by Robert L. Stevenson

🎵: Epic III from Hadestown (the off-broadway live version, which in my opinion is lyrical superior to the broadway version, fight me on that)