365 Days Of Marketing And Me: Day Twenty-Two - 1/22/2021

One Creative Introverts Effort To Take On The Extroverted Marketing World…

Welcome to day twenty-two of 365 Days Of Marketing And Me… where yesterday I promised to share my tale of a Viking Funeral a few friends and I held for a dead squirrel that I found while at a friend’s party… this was about a decade and a half ago… right after I graduated film school… and was living in San Diego to be closer to L.A. because I thought it would improve my odds of selling one of my scripts…

As my thirtieth birthday approached… I decided to buy a ticket to return to Seattle… to celebrate aging out of my twenties with the friends who made the age range I was leaving so much fun… I was successful enough at the time… whatever I was doing… to be able to afford to rent a fancy car… well… I was able to rent one level up from standard… but I’m six foot four… so I will pay extra for the additional legroom…

I stayed at the house that I lived in before moving away for school… which is also the same house I moved back to after I realizing how I never traveled to L.A. all that much because I was too busy with my day job… I also noticed that I wasn’t collecting as many stories minus the group of friends I was visiting for this birthday/reunion…

The reunion aspect was a friend who left for college out of state around the same time I moved to Canada to attend film school… so… this friend decided to though a party at his parents’ house… since they were out of town… I always found it funny how even though we were all in our mid to late twenties we still had high school-style parties whenever someone’s parents left town…

On the way to the back door… with twelve-packs and forties in hand… I spotted a dead squirrel in the driveway… and spent the rest of the party joking about my sadness over the loss of this furry friend that I decided to name Jasper T. Squirrel… with the “T.” standing for “The”… of course… when I was informed that my dead friend ended up in the trash… I insisted we dig him out to give him a proper send-off…

We spent the rest of the night joking about putting together a Viking Funeral… the next day… I woke up bright and early… and called one of the friends to see if he was ready for me to come and get him to pick up funeral supplies… at first… I feared he would answer the phone only to find that the funeral was nothing but drunken talk… only he was up and ready to go…

As we travel from store to store… to buy a remote control boat to pull the floating box that would burn… as well as other needed supplies… we called everyone else from the party… and to our surprise… not one person had failed to start their part in the plan… after buying the boat… I washed and dried the poor dead squirrel who hung out in the back of the rental we shopped…

As the sun went down… we slapped everything together for a quick memorial before heading down to the Puget Sound… to send our dead friend off in a flaming boat… it took us a while to figure out how to light the fire while the remote control boat towed the squirrel in a floating wooden box… and almost lost everything to the choppy waters…

Eventually… the wooden box was lit and the remote control boat pulled our firey friend past the choppy bits as we watched until the flames died down about five to ten minutes later… none of us were all that sure whether or not any of this was legal… so we rushed off as soon as the fire went out… leaving the remote control boat to fend for itself…

One of these days… I’ll have to share the full story… but for now… I feel that this is a good start… there used to be a video of the events from this evening… but I couldn’t find it anywhere…. it must have been taken down by either the site that was hosting it… or by my friend who did the camera work… fortunately… you can click here… if you’re interested in buying any Jasper T. Squirrel Merchandise… this is a marketing challenge after all…

And with that… it’s time to introduce the assignment for today…

Even though it’s Friday… we are also twenty-two days into the month of January… making today the start of week number four… according to the 365 Days Of Marketing book… today is Blonde Brownie Day… which is a day that doesn’t really do anything for me… and I don’t have time to run to the store to buy vanilla brownies… I’ll opt instead to use this post to celebrate the fact that it’s also Take Back Your Time Week… which seems more fitting of a challenge right now…

For one… my schedule is clearing now that I have fewer technical issues to tackle… but also… now that my health issues seem to be lightening up… I need to fit more time into my life for physical activities… I’m not fully sure how I plan to handle this task as I type… but I’m sure I’ll figure it out when the deadline for this assignment comes up… I look forward to sharing what I come up with in tomorrow’s post!!!