Hello. I am Jeff Hiller. I am a comedian. I am (I guess) now on Substack.

“Why are you on Substack, Jeff?” you might be asking. “What could you possibly add to all of the numerous emails I get everyday from authors, intellectuals and occasionally Charli XCX?”

That’s a fair question.

The answer is because I recently read Book of Lives by Margaret Atwood. I love a celebrity memoir as you may know if you read MY celebrity memoir (with a loose definition of the word “Celebrity”), Actress of a Certain Age. I realize that Margaret Atwood is considered a great mind, author, and thought leader more than a celebrity but she’s way more famous than I am, and I count my book in the genre, so let’s just go with it.

In her autobiography, Ms. Atwood discusses her amazing life, accomplishments, and settles some scores (she is after all, a Scorpio). She is as brilliant as you would imagine, but she is also droll, witty, and really fun. I would also recommend her “Master Class” series on writing. She has such a delightful twinkle in her eye through the entire class that you want to write just to see if you get a twinkle like that in your own eyeballs.

But to get back to why her book is making me start my substack, let me tell you a story from Margaret Atwood’s life. She lived for many years on a working farm with her partner Graeme Gibson. They grew vegetables, and had sheep and chickens. She details the incredibly difficult work that comes with farming, as well as its often gruesome side effects. One of the stories concerns a rooster who saw his duty as protecting the hens in his charge. The hens didn’t really care that the rooster crowed and screeched around them trying to get them not to be around the sheep or in the garden near potential foxes. He wanted to make sure they were safe and he was really ANGRY that they wouldn’t listen to his wisdom!

One day, while trying to corral them to what he felt was safety, Graeme walked between the rooster and the chickens, and the rooster screamed loudly, jumped up and down, and fell over dead. They took the rooster to the vet to make sure he didn’t have a disease he could spread to the rest of the fowl, and the vet assured them it was no disease. “This rooster died of rage.”

I think we might be in the same danger as that rooster. There are SO MANY things that make us angry in this world right now, and unlike the rooster, most of these things SHOULD make us angry! We have to use that anger to fuel us to do right by the people who are suffering in this world. Use that rage to get you to call your representatives, to go to protests, to organize for justice, and to vote, vote, vote the people making horrible decisions out of office.

Yes, use the rage. But also… we gotta lower our cortisol levels every once in a while or we will fall over dead like Margaret Atwood’s rooster.

So that is why I am here at Substack. To try to lower your cortisol and bring a little bit of joy to the world or at least your inbox. I plan to put some stuff in here that didn’t make my first book and write some things that will hopefully make it into the second book. I also plan to write random thoughts and share fun stories with anyone who needs a lil time off from feeling that rooster rage.

Welcome! I hope this is fun!

xx,

Jeff