It’s only Wednesday, but it’s already been a long week.
Hello and welcome back to Jenna Gets Creative! I need a low effort, relaxing video day, so
I’m pulling unused footage out of the archive and not even producing anything new today.
You’re watching me create my mother’s Christmas present from 2019! I do recall that
the watercolour galaxy thing going on is Marabu Aqua Graphix watercolour ink and I believe
the gold is one of my starry colours palette gansai tambi paints by Kuretake. Off the top
of my head without watching the video again, I don’t remember what black ink product
or products I used. I might be working with just liner pens. I might have used my Pentel
colorbrush pen. I might have used Kuretaki Sumi ink. Maybe all three! Who knows! You
will in a couple minutes.
I have a note left for myself on the folder the raw footage is in to edit out shakes,
which means I noticed myself hitting the camera stand once or twice, but I recorded this like
18 months ago. I don’t remember when to look for the edits anymore. I’m very sorry
if there are any long shakes that last too long even when the footage is sped up.
So, I’m going to talk about all the news and drama that’s making this such a long
week now. If you’re curious, keep listening! If you just want to relax, mute the video
now and just watch the art happen. No hard feelings, I promise!
First of all, before I get into the stuff that’s more personal to me, let’s acknowledge
that Derek Chauvin has been convicted guilty on all charges in the murder of George Floyd.
I hesitate to call this justice served because obviously there was a whole lot of injustice
that happened to get us to this point and there’s nothing anyone can do that’ll
make things right for George’s family, but this IS a victory. This is the first time
in the history of the USA that a white man in law enforcement has been charged with the
murder of a black individual. Let’s make sure it’s not the last, because the systemic
racism in North America that leads to situations like George Floyd’s last minutes of life
needs to be torn down. Remember that more needs to be done, don’t get complacent now.
Go listen to Black voices and what they’re saying we need to do now.
And of course we can’t even celebrate this victory too hard because on the same day over
in Columbus, Ohio, we lost 16 year old Ma'Khia Bryant to lethal force by police. On April
11th we lost 20 year old Daunte Wright. On March 29th we lost 13 year old Adam Toledo.
I won’t go into the details of those cases because I don’t want to anger the censor
bots here, but remember that police aren’t supposed to default to deadly force on guilty
people either, but none of these kids were putting the officers’ lives in immediate
danger. And yes I said kids. The media loves to say young men and women but these are kids.
13. 16. 20. One turned around with empty hands as ordered. One was swinging a blade at someone
else, well out of reach of the officer. One was pulled over for a traffic stop. These
are not reasons to take their entire adult lives from them, and in some of those cases
most of their teenage years as well. Chauvin’s case ended in victory, but we are not done.
Not even close.
Okay, moving on! Monday night I was leaning into my anxiety tendencies a little too much
and lamenting over property prices back where I grew up. We aren’t planning to move there,
we’re happy in our house, but it’s unsettling to know we’re priced out of not just my
hometown if we ever decided to move closer to my family, but most of my entire home province.
British Columbia’s real estate market it insane. In late 2016 out here in Newfoundland
we paid well under $200k for a 4 bedroom fixer upper on a corner lot in a suburb about 20
minutes from city centre in the provincial capital. Do you know what the equivalent in
my home town costs right now? $1.5 million, if you’re lucky. So I was sitting here at
2, 2:30am when I should have been finishing my blog posts already and getting my tired
butt in bed, I was embracing morbid curiosity and checking real estate sites to see exactly
how far you had to wander from my home town to get a detached 3+ bedroom house for anything
reasonable. The answer is a couple of hours driving distance, up into the mountains or
straight north into nothingness. Some of my high school friends and their spouses have
managed to snag detached and town houses just across the river from where we grew up and
I’m wondering what kind of a shoestring budget they’re living on with the mortgages
they must have now. But that’s not the point of mentioning this. That time? 2 to 2:30am
Newfoundland time? That’s 10pm BC time. And at 10, 10:30pm BC time, a large, new condo
complex in my home town burnt down. Only the elevator shafts are standing now and about
100 people from nearby complexes weren’t allowed back in their own homes for over 24
hours. Fortunately the two buildings that were completely destroyed weren’t occupied
yet. Unfortunately it did do significant damage to a third tower that was partially occupied,
and it did a lot of damage to the exposed sides of the nearest units in the neighbouring
townhouse complex. This was directly across from an elementary school. My mom and sister
teach at different elementary schools in the area, far enough away to have other schools,
and they can smell it in their classrooms. People living in high rise buildings several
cities away and across the river could see the fire. So, I’m not exactly calling myself
psychic or anything, but how weird is it that at the exact time I was doom scrolling through
real estate listings for that neighbourhood a massive fire broke out and destroyed a new
condo development in that neighbourhood?
Moving on again! There’s been drama in the book world. Last week Tuesday, back on the
13th, a book titled Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing was released and the author, Lauren
Hough (not sure I’m pronouncing that correctly) immediately took to Twitter to attack her
advanced reading copy reviewers. She screenshotted glowingly positive 4 and 4.5 star reviews,
Goodreads is a 5 star system and 3 is supposed to mean average good book, and she posted
these screenshots with comments like “I see reviewers are still not rating 5 stars
just to show they’re tough. You forgot to assign homework, nerds.” She went on a rambling
rant about how most authors agree with her that reviewers leaving 4 stars are stupid
but other authors are just afraid to speak up. When Twitter called her out, as Twitter
niches do, she said everybody chill out, she was high, it’s fine. So people went to Goodreads
to leave their comments on the book to warn other reviewers what was going on and maybe
send a message to the publisher that they’ve got an author potentially creating a big PR
mess. Many attached 1-star ratings to their comments or said nasty things. I did not.
The author started comparing everyone calling out to rape. She called everyone who’d interacted
with her book’s listing Nazis. She has individually blocked every Twitter account that has mentioned
her name without kissing her ass. Some of her hardcore fans are trying to track down
real world employers of reviewers to get them fired. Others are replying to everything posted
to Goodreads to harass and belittle everyone else. My comment, that once again was NOT
a rated review because I do not rate books I have not read, got reported and removed.
I have a strike against me. There are literally more than a thousand dishonest 1 star reviews
on that book but people who calmly left an unrated comment explaining the situation are
facing consequences. I’ve also discovered through this whole fiasco that Goodreads is
a bit broken in that if you remove all your responses to a question asked on a Goodreads
book listing, you’ll still get notifications about further replies to that question. So
I tried to just forget about Lauren Hough and her book and leave it to people who feel
they have less to lose on the platform, but Goodreads insists on filling my notifications
with new activity on that book.
I’d also like to comment, by the way, that this is a non-fiction book. It’s a collection
of autobiographical essays. If there’s ever a case for judging a book you haven’t read
based on the author’s actions, it’s with a book that’s just the author’s personal
thoughts about their own life and existence. Some of her groupies are telling everyone
who spoke out that we should read her book so we can understand her sense of humour,
but of course those of us with sense are pointing out if this book will make us think bullying
supporters is funny then we don’t want to touch it with a 10 foot pole. There’s also
groupies telling us we don’t deserve to read her book. I guess I’m unworthy. What
a shame.
So, yeah. All of this is why you’re getting previously unseen old footage today. I’m
gonna go make pizza dough now and wait for my seasonal meeting with the other members
of the HarperCollins YA influencer team on Zoom tonight.
If you’re looking for more to watch I’ve got some suggestions up on the left side of
the screen now. Don’t forget to like, comment, maybe even subscribe, and if you like living
life creatively, whatever that means to you, I’d love to have you along for the ride.
Bye guys!