A (mostly) nonviolent 2023 in reflection with Smuggler Sasquatch Stomp Freedomfoot

This is what happens when you let your main character co-host the year in review.

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I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say when I sat down. I knew that I wanted to thank all of you for being here. I knew that I wanted to reflect on this year. I figure the realest way to express anything is to go into it with an empty head and a thumpin’ heart. So, I figure that I’ll—

Do you got more Poptarts? I only got crumbs left.

Don’t interrupt, Stomp.

I’m all crumby but got no more food.

I gave you three boxes of blueberry Poptarts when we sat down. Please don’t interrupt my monologue with the readers. Just sit in your interview chair and be still.

Do the reader people got Poptarts?

No, Stomp. Nobody is going to reach through the internet to give you Poptarts.

They better. Or else.

Please don’t threaten the readers, Stomp. And stop squirming in your chair—you’re making it all…what is this? Fur oil? Why is the chair greasy?

I get sweaty when I’m nervous. And I sat in some butter.  

As you can see, I invited my main character, Stomp, to sit down and reflect on the year with me. I will assuredly regret this decision in 20 minutes—

Are you going to introduce me?  

I am introducing you.

Yeah, but tell them what I do. Make me sound good.  

Stomp Manitobus Freedomfoot is a smuggler, fugitive, assassin, bouncer, gourmet, burglar, robber, protagonist, Revolutionary and Civil War veteran, and world-renowned truck-stop vending machine wrecker.  

He visits with me here in Pennsylvania, coming all the way from…where’d you come from?

I was smokin’ greenjah in Buffalo with some unicorns and came down ‘cause you promised more Poptarts.

Stomp violently shakes an empty Poptart box and throws it on my floor.

But you don’t got no more Poptarts.

You’re being a toddler now. You were not smoking anything and nobody calls it “greenjah.” Let me speak for a minute.

Was so smokin’ greenjah…

In many ways, 2023 has been the most emotionally difficult I’ve ever experienced. A part of me rationalizes this. When someone I loved died or left in the past, I numbed it out with alcohol. I decided long before I knew how to approach it, that all this erosive despair would not end me. I would get better, even if I did not yet know how. The past five years, I have recovered and restored from wounds, and I had to strip away much of the chemical insulation and distractions to do it.

I learned tools and routines, like sitting at the creek and reading one hour per day. Sometimes these structures helped, and sometimes I fell backward and crawled forward. This year, I have confronted everything wide open. Because of that wide-openness, I feel everything as if I laid down in a bathtub filled with electric eels high on star energy.

As I look back through this year, I recognize that the harder things felt, the more I created. Between January and March, I wrote eight short stories. Eight!

Wow, that’s a lot. If you wrote one more, that’d be…

Stomp counts on his fingers…

Nine.

Escape or therapy, in the hardest moments, I embrace storytelling.

I started publishing stories on Substack in June. The cocktail of free-associating words that spring to mind during this experience are: therapeutic, grinding, learning, acceptance, rejection, elation, comradery, affirmation, alienation, channeling, belonging, rawness, playfulness, wild weirdness, and…

Gratefulness.

I thank each of you who have listened, responded, read, encouraged, advised, or are simply here existing in this space because you like the smell of woodsmoke.

Don’t forget to be thankful for me. Tell the book people you’re thankful for me.  

I…I am—just, please—let me still talk for a minute.

Okay.

I look forward to entertaining you into the new year. Make you laugh more. Cry more, if that’s what you feel. I hope whoever is reading can feel a little less alone in whatever you’re going through. There is more life to be lived.  

Wow, so inspiring.

I hope to meet more of you, in the comments or email or on the street or at events or on a small, upstart island in Polynesia where we’ve both been stranded with a single pineapple and a wooden case of rum from 1742.

I know a crew of sea turtles who would rum-smuggle out of Polynesia. To San Diego. Hand it off to the wharf rats. Love me some Polynesian rat rum.   

Sure, Stomp. Alright, so…do you want to say anything?

I want to give a shoutout to Pepe Le Montserrat at that gluten-free bakery in upstate New York that I robbed last week. When I smashed down the door, he didn’t even screech for the police—

I think you should stop. You’re probably implicating yourself pretty hard right now. And Pepe, is that even a real name?

He looked like a Pepe. Gave me all the pies in the case. Didn’t even screech.  

That’s wonderful, Stomp. Continuing to terrorize civilians even when I’m not writing you. Do you want to thank anyone for real?

Thank you for creating entertainment from my pain and laughing when I hurt myself. Like when the children in the bus attacked me and shaved my eyebrows and belly button and you made it a big, dumb story...

Well, that just sounds super passive-aggressive. And extremely offputting. That was a wonderful story, by the way.

Stomp grunts and puts his hand over his eyes.

Dhmmm...I am just happy for the readers. Why do I feel like a Muppet right now?  

You’re not a Muppet, Stomp. But this dialogue does feel like a puppeteer with their Muppet, doesn’t it? Anyway, I’m going to move on.

Let’s do the statistics.

Yeah, let’s do that.

So, I see a lot of authors talking about how they grew this year, or how much they wrote. That’s all good. Stomp and I are gonna contribute our piece. Here’s what happened on Stomp Roams in 2023. Stomp Freedomfoot:

·      Consumed 600 pounds of stolen pastries

·      Was directly responsible for the bonking deaths of over two dozen evil villain men

·      Ingested two pallets of imported Estonian monk’s cheese

Aw, that was such good cheese pallets.

·      Illegally robbed or burglarized 37 bakeries

So tasty.

·      Drank eighty gallons of beer

More tasty.

·      Safely smuggled three juvenile unicorns to their parents in the Siskiyou-Klamath Range in a stolen Cloudbrew truck

Whew, so glad we got those little horny horses safe and sound.  

·      Sincerely and authentically made a great effort to protect the creatures of the forest

You know, eighty gallons of beer is really not that much. I really cut down.

You did, sir. Good job. Okay, this is an exciting part. Do we wanna tell people what’s upcoming in 2023?

Uh huh.

One of the learning experiences of this trial-and-error creative life campaign is that I recognize I get overwhelmed when I try to do too much for the sake of subscriber growth. I would love to have more readers, but at a baseline, and as

Winston Malone

said, “If you don’t value yourself at zero subscribers, why would you value yourself at 1,000 or 10,000?”

This is not a game to pump out empty calories of content. It’s about creating stories. Creating art.

Damn right.

So, I want to organize series in more purposeful, bite-sized chunks instead of leaving them open-ended like Irreverently Vulnerable. The first series I’m excited to share is a four-part interview series that I’ll publish every other week. I am going to transition Irreverently Vulnerable for the time being into this fiction-focused interview series, and will interview a Fantastical bounty hunter—

Yuck.

A Fantastical Shepherd—

Sweet.

A Fantastical rights activist, and a victim of Fantastical violence, to get a myriad of perspectives.

Mixed feelings now.

These will be interviews with totally real figures in society. Totally, totally real. This interview series will be called “Into the Woods.”

The second four-part series, which I’ll likely publish in the spring, will be “Recipes of the Wood.” I’d love to cook for all of you, and plan to do just that. After I publish these series, I’ll revisit based on reader feedback and what I’m enjoying the most to see if I’ll re-up either or both of them.

Of course, I will continue to publish one immersive, lush Stomp story once per month.

Please don’t hurt me this year.

I’m sorry, Stomp. I need to. Conflict makes good stories.

Yeah, but this year you sicked those sewer gators on me and that hurt. I still gots gator teeth in my skin.  

Yeah, but…people loved that story. A little sewer gator pain goes a long way. Look, I promise I’ll feed you well. Sometimes. Sometimes I’ll have to starve you to make you mad.

Stomp don’t wanna get mad.

Right, but back to that ol’ “conflict makes good stories” thing…

Can you at least not break my heart no more in 2024?

Alright, fine. We can agree on that. But I can’t guarantee it. Love is gonna Love, baby.

That makes no sense.

Don’t care. Okay, I thank you all much. I look forward to this new year. If you’re partying tonight, flush your keys down the toilet. Stomp, you wanna say anything else?

My butt hurts.

His butt hurts. Real highbrow stuff, Stomp.

See y’all in two weeks with the first post for “In the Woods”!

Buh-bye!

Stomp picks up a cinnamon cocoa-scented candle.

Hey, can I eat this? Mmm smells good…

No, put that down. You can’t eat the candle. I’m turning the—please take the candle out of your mouth.

Tastes like burning in my tummy.

The readers are still watching. Please behave. Stop eating my candles.

I thought we said buh-bye?

We did say buh-bye. We’re doing the buh-bye for real now. You’re a seven-foot sasquatch. This is totally unbecoming.  

Happy new year, everyone!

Buh-bye!

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I’m so glad you came along for this year-end recap with my co-host, Stomp. If you’d like to support Stomp Roams, you can share the story or tap that little “subscribe” button.

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