Stuff by Harry Hill

I’m just gonna say it: I’m pregnant. Phew. Ok. That’s how it begins. Yes, I’m pregnant…but not with a child. With Stuff, my newsletter! And I suppose this post is going to be me…in labor? Giving birth, so to speak. Is this too weird? Should I start over like a normal person? Hang on. Mark, can we adjust the lights?

Happy April Fool’s Day! I’m a writer! This isn’t a joke. Unless of course, it is. No, I’m serious. Dead fucking serious. I want to be a writer! There. I said it! HA! No punchbacks! 

Here’s the thing: I’ve been writing this since 2024. Not this post, per se (per se! He said per se in his very first Substack!), but this idea. Stuff. Isn’t that such a good word? It’s so juicy and big even though it’s one syllable. I had to clap to make sure. Do you ever clap to figure out how many syllables a word is, like we were taught to in the second grade? I still do the syllable clap check at least once a month. Try it now with the word “hamburger.” 

Alright, settle down everyone. Hold the applause till the end, please! 

For the past decade, Instagram has been my main notepad, the place I’d write everything and publish it for the world. Long captions under random photos. Story posts that disappeared after 24 hours, only brought up when someone at a party grabs my elbow and says, “remember when you found those pills on the ground at Gov Ball?” Yes, I remember because I lived it and wrote it down. But only vaguely. I want to write stuff (wig) more purposely in a place that won’t disappear tomorrow. This will be better for everyone involved. I’ll be able to catalog the stories of my life and you will be able to access them whenever you want. Neither of us will have to strain to remember the restaurant I was about to go to with the Midtown sugar daddy who bought me a seafood tower in 2019. (Answer: Rue 57. Which apparently closed in 2025? Did we know this?)

It’s now 2026. April 1st. There’s a full pink moon in Libra today. I’m a Libra. This has to happen NOW. If I don’t start my Substack today, the moon said she’s going to send a tsunami that will wipe out SOMBR’s house and then I won’t get to see him at Coachella. That would totally suck. I need to see SOMBR live! So here I am, clocked in, writing for my life. For SOMBR’s life. 

Writing this has taken me so long because I’m afraid of it the same way I was afraid of guacamole before I tried it. Do you remember the first time you tried guacamole? It’s scary! Mushy and green with all those little things in it. But then? You dip a chip in it, bring it to your mouth, and take a bite. Wait. That’s really fucking good! What have I been afraid of this whole time?  

It’s not that I’m afraid of writing. I’m afraid of starting something new. It’s scary to me, being able to see the beginning of something but not the end. But even scarier, many will agree, is not doing the scary thing at all. Not looking under the bed is always scarier than just taking a peek. There’s never even a monster down there! Just a pair of dusty drawers and a nickel. A dollar, if you’re lucky.

The real monster is me when I’m talking about writing Stuff instead of just doing it. I’ve been noodling on this for so long it’s basically macaroni and cheese. All my friends are annoyed that I won’t just sit down and write the damn thing. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. I always say I’m going to start tomorrow. News flash! Tomorrow’s today, bitch!  And I’m eating the guacamole! 

You know when there’s something that you reaallllyyy want to do but you’re too afraid to do it so you keep putting it off, even though you know that once you do it, you’ll be able to move on with the rest of your life? It’s like being spiritually constipated, which is arguably the worst kind of constipation. Well, there’s only one known cure for spiritual constipation. Wanna know what it is? 

Full studio audience: GUA-CA-MOLE! 

I’m sorry, I have no idea how this whole entire thing became about guacamole. Maybe my next one will be about queso. Or why I’m newly obsessed with the Evian facial mist I got at Nordstrom Rack on a whim. Or what it was like meeting Kaia Gerber two weeks ago while wearing Burberry pants.

Because there are so many things I want to write about (clearly), I decided to call this project Stuff. That way, I can write about all kinds of stuff. Girl stuff, guy stuff, New York stuff. Shoe stuff. Party stuff. Stuff about being a dish soap influencer. Stuff about why it’s annoying to me when men type in lowercase (unless I’m trying to sword fight with them, in which case it’s kinda hot). All sorts of stuff! 

And you, sweet reader, will be able to say, on a dimly lit first date, after a couple nervous sips of wine, “Oh, yeah I read Stuff…” to which the guy will hopefully respond with a cocked head and a game of footsy. Good stuff. 

In 2003, a philosopher named Hilary Duff asked two very hard hitting questions: “Why not take a crazy chance? Why not do a crazy dance?” Over the past few years, I’ve come up with a million reasons why not to do this. What if my grandma reads it and calls to ask me what sword fighting means? What if my writing gets translated into 29 languages and then I can’t go to Tokyo without getting hounded in the streets? Turns out, none of those reasons are real and I made them up in my head. Who woulda thunk!

Wait, hang on. My grandma’s calling me. 

Jussssst kidding. 

So today, with Hilary Erhard Duff’s crystalline voice in my head, I will take a crazy chance and post this. Be a writer. Not just talk about being a writer. Yes, that is Hilary’s real middle name; “Erhard.” That can be your dinner party fact of the week. Mine will be that I’m a writer. And when they ask what I write, I’ll finally have my answer: 

I write Stuff.