Dear Journal,

The holiday season is upon us and it’s the first time I’ve taken time off since the summer. Theoretically, this is a natural, cleansing period of solitude. But for me it ends up being this depressive coma where I sit in my apartment eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch, watching the E! Network, and forgetting that I have a lower half of my body. I love E! because it makes me think that things that are unimportant are really important. I’m like, “I need to know about the sexiest people from the 80s.” E! also answers all the questions that you were never going to ask. Like, “I wonder how Full House was made?”

I went to the doctor this week and found that I’ve officially hit the moment in my late 20s when for no reason you gain 10 pounds by eating the same thing you always have. Here I am thinking that I was gonna knock off 5 pounds and then I get on the scale and realize that I’m have to lose 10 to get to the point where I can lose 5. It’s like going to your teacher to get extra credit on your paper and then he realizes that the paper wasn’t as good as he originally thought. “Mike, I’ve decided to make your C into a D and with extra credit that will make it a D+.” When I saw my weight on the scale, I looked at the nurse and said, “REALLY?” and she said, “Yep.” And then she walked out of the room.

I was completely depressed, so as a gift my brother Joe bought me a massage, which seems like a stress-reducing activity, but it actually isn’t⎯because I’m naked⎯which for me is very stressful. Only a few professions have the “all-access naked pass.” Like doctors, morticians, and strip club managers. Now I can understand a doctor, because a doctor went to school for 7 years. And even a strip club manager dropped out of high school at 17, murdered his landlord, and worked his way up. Morticians only get to see you naked when you’re dead and dead naked is just not sexy.

So I’m thinking about this on the massage table and she’s trying to get me to relax. She says, “Think nothing.” And I can’t think nothing. I try, and then I think “I have nothing in my bank account. I have nothing to give my girlfriend for Christmas. There’s nothing that makes me more uncomfortable than a complete stranger looking at my naked ass.”

At the end of the week, I returned to work and it was the best thing for me. As I came to, I got a surge of energy, and it led to better, funnier, and sexier shows. I think when you have too much time on your hands you start to think that unimportant things are really important. In attempting to relax, you get more stressed by pressuring yourself to be relaxed and then you end up with a D+. It’s simple really.

All you have to do is think nothing. Naked.

And that concludes this week’s entry in my secret public journal.