Jed Wolf

I hit peak winter depression today, drowning in the sargassum of negative thoughts bobbing around my head (yes, I’m using fancy seaweed metaphors now—that’s how desperate I am), when something extraordinary happened at the gym.

There I was, mindlessly watching my biceps refuse to cooperate, when I spotted what appeared to be a celebrity. Now, I’m not typically the type to get excited about TV stars. I can barely remember my own relatives’ names, let alone identify someone from HGTV. But desperate times call for desperate measures, so I did what any mature adult would do: I began an amateur surveillance operation.

My technique was flawless. I strategically positioned myself near various pieces of equipment I had no intention of using, pretending to be deeply fascinated by the proper form for exercises I’d never attempt. When he caught me staring at him in the mirror for the third (okay, seventh) time, I executed my master plan: I pretended I’d just noticed him and asked, “Are you Drew Scott, one of the Property Brothers?”

He turned, smiled broadly—the kind of smile that says “I deal with this every day of my life”—and replied, “That, I am.”

Instead of this encounter magically curing my winter blues, I mumbled something about loving his show and drifted away like a tumbleweed in a ghost town, suddenly consumed with thoughts about what it must be like to be stalked by random people at the gym. Do celebrities have a secret code word for “help, there’s another one watching me do lat pulls”?

The good news is, it’s almost daylight saving time, and the temperature might finally reach the mid-forties tomorrow. But most importantly, I’m now deeply grateful for my blessed obscurity. Nobody follows me around the gym—except maybe the trainer trying to sell me sessions, but that’s different.

Sorry, Drew. At least I didn’t ask you to renovate my emotional state.