I am a terrible multitasker. I thought I'd be able to alternate between writing and taking podcast notes, but when I'm in the writing zone (indeed in any zone), I find it very difficult to pull away and do something else. Even if I designate the something else towards the tail-end of the day.
So today I will attempt to power through 6 episodes, half the season we recorded. Now, each episode is quite long; an hour or more in some cases, which means more video-watching than I can handle. Basic logic would dictate spreading the episode-watching and notetaking across several days to ease the blow of the task at hand, but that would necessitate employing the kind of mental gearshift that I sorely lack.
Why am I like this?
#journal #work #podcast
It may not look like it yet, but the illustration I'm working on is for an essay that feels very timely with everything going on right now, penned by none other than Ahmed Naji.
Background listening is The Ottoman History Podcast, in particular a surprisingly rich episode on Mamluk Cairo. Surprising because it gets into some delicious details I knew little to nothing about; like the wandering carnivalesque peoples known as Al Ghurabaa` (“The Strangers”) and the odd jobs they performed, the fluid mix of tongues they spoke, and perhaps most interestingly of all... their printing.
“The Strangers” were the first to introduce printing to Egypt apparently, likely some form of woodblock printing (tin matrices were also employed), in languages ranging from Arabic to Coptic and Hebrew (and quite possibly more). Excited to learn more on the subject matter from Kristina Richardson's upcoming book; GYPSIES IN THE MEDIEVAL ISLAMIC WORLD: A HISTORY OF THE GHURABA, forthcoming with Bloomsbury Publishers.
#Journal #Work #Podcast #Research