Jay Leno missed two days of hosting The Tonight Show last month – his first in 17 years of hosting the late night show — due to exhaustion.

Jay’s busy workload includes, hosting the show five nights a week, traveling for standup comedy gigs across the country, and writing three print columns about his passion — classic cars.

“Exhaustion,” Jay joked to PEOPLE on Friday. “That’s like a rich person’s condition. Poor people that work – they don’t get exhausted. Only rich people get exhausted. It’s an embarrassing thing.”

He added, “I write for the London Sunday Times, I write for Popular Mechanics every month and I write for a British magazine called Octane. I do all automotive stuff. And then I’m on the road 160 days. I think it’s one of those deals where you just got worn out.”