ENJOY EVERY SANDWICH

It was my birthday yesterday.

Jul 14, 2026

Yesterday was my birthday. As the subtitle this article literally just told you. The BIG 4-8! Look, I will be shameless, and if you REALLY want to give me a gift? Share this Substack with someone you might know. Even if you don’t like this article and hate that it reminds you of your own mortality, give it one of those big ole hearts. Subscribe to this if you aren’t subscribed and just stumbled on it. And hell, if you are feeling wild, I do have an option to subscribe for money to this. I know, I know. Shameless. It’s wild to remember that writing is both for expressing the inner workings of the heart AND for making money off of it to be able to keep living to write more things from the heart (and if you are some publisher looking for horror novels or other things for me to work on, more on that later, LET ME KNOW).

No one is above the fray of self-promotion.

But I digress. Start the actual article.

As an official old man, it is my time to uphold the time-honored tradition of telling you what, in my 48th year, I am shooting for after many years of learning. And my many years of being a (I hope), lovable curmudgeon. It’s ultimately what I am shooting for in life, and now that I have moved from thinking “oh I bet I’ll have greying temples like Reed Richards” to “OH NO I HAVE GREYING TEMPLES LIKE REED RICHARDS. WE HAVE TO GO BACK!”, what I’m working on being a Warren Zevon reference makes sense.

Enjoy Every Sandwich.

Pretty amazing picture of Warren Zevon that I could have inserted a sandwich in but did not out of respect.

It’s a mantra I repeat to myself all the time. If you don’t know, it comes from when Zevon appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and he was asked by Letterman if he had gained any wisdom from the diagnosis.

Basically…just enjoy every sandwich. It’s right there, people! Enjoy every moment. Try your best to appreciate everything you are doing instead of getting sucked into your mind and thinking about how you have been wronged by the world and how you messed up, etc etc fill in the blanks, what you do to beat yourself up.

You don’t know (or, in his case, Zevon did more than most of us) when it will all be over. And as I enter my “only two years until I am Wilford Brimley’s age when he shot the movie “Cocoon” phase of life, it feels extra important to remember it.

Me and my son. Image and joke stolen from my own Instagram yesterday

On the other end of the Brimley spectrum, when you also realize that every single meme people share about how old someone was when they got their first TV writing job, and you are 10-15 years OLDER than that age? Time to REALLY enjoy that sandwich.

Now this is not some Aleister Crowley “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law so I’m just gonna do a lot of sketchy shit” mantra. I’m a 48-year-old straight-edge dude who likes to hang with my family, listen to records, read, and watch movies. So there will be no ribald tales of debauchery, probably ever, in this Substack. And frankly, people super into Crowley have always been creeps. Looking at you, Jimmy Paige!

Picture of Crowley trying to use sex magick to get an actual sandwich

BUT (Garlock but) I am a person who is legit addicted to anxiety and beating myself up about all of my choices, and have 10 years of therapy under my belt to prove it. And I’m tired of it. I’ve been tired of it for a while. I’m aware that mantras and talking about how you are changing and staying present are often bullshit. But I am trying my best. “Enjoy every sandwich” is a reset button to stop my mind from going down every tributary I can easily go down and stay truly focused on the thing right in front of me. Because almost always that thing is at its worst, and I say this as a recovering pessimist/contrarian, very, very nice.

It also works because I have always been obsessed with giant party subs and have never gotten one. Maybe I will change it to “enjoy every six-foot party sub” sooner rather than later.

Like I said, yesterday was my birthday. How would I have spent my birthday in most years before? Well, most of my birthday celebration would be to spend the entire day talking about how I didn’t care about it and didn’t want to make a big deal about it. And then get upset as I slowly kept mental track of who sent me a card. Who did or did not text me? Who liked any sort of post that went up about my birthday (this is when we moved into the social media age). And more importantly, who DIDN’T like any of this or reach out in any capacity. Then try not to get bogged down in feelings of “my God, I am so old. My God, I am so much closer to dying. My god I didn’t get done anything I had planned on getting accomplished this year and I messed up this and this and am I a failure and man I’m so angry at this person and this place and this world and myself” and then I would go to a movie, eat a lot of Indian food and blow out a candle on a donut and watch a movie with my very loving wife. A true pleasure for all.

It was exhausting. It is exhausting. My brain was basically what social media is like for almost everyone I know, and me. A constant stream of anger and calling everything a dumpster fire and remembering things while I scream at myself “PEOPLE THIS IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING!” (Why are we all on it again? Oh right…connection and because “we have to for our careers”).

Because when I am out and about in the real world, I really do enjoy every sandwich as much as I can. And look, we are all just getting older. That is inevitable. And the world is, like how it has always been, terrible and great, all at the same time. But it does nothing for me anymore to always think it’s terrible and nothing but. To keep everything at a fever pitch. Because it’s just not true. When it’s worthwhile to be angry, I know I can and will be. Trust me. I’m good.

But I have been trucking like this for most of my life. The engine can’t keep going at that rate.

Especially now that at this age, friends and loved ones dying feels closer than it ever did. This year, I (we) lost a very good friend and bandmate. He was not the first, and he will not be the last. And it sucks. It really does. Every day. But it really just made me be like “alright. This is it. I’m in grad school for working on myself. I can’t screw around. Enjoy every sandwich can’t just be a phrase you say”. If it feels like just some bullshit to put on a piece of driftwood, then it might as well just be “Eat, Pray, Love” or “It’s Wine O’Clock Somewhere”. But I actually got to do it. Because the counter is just counting down. And it ain’t stopping.

The other day I was explaining the plot of “Interstellar” to my son and how it’s one of the, like, 5 movies that actually make me cry (crying being a thing I try to make myself actually do more because I’m kind of terrible at it. Trying to enjoy that crying sandwich as well). And as I explained the whole part of McConaughey getting all the letters from his kids, realizing he missed their whole life because they got older, to my son, I started tearing up in front of him. Over that, otherwise, pretty goofy movie. But I enjoyed that sandwich with him. He got to see the old man cry because I love him. And because I love and miss my friends. And the march of time is brutal. But reality is part of the sandwich (then I could get into “learn to love the rope” which if you are a reader of this or a friend you know is another life philosophy, and LOOK, THIS IS NOW JUST GETTING COMPLICATED, AND I AM TRYING TO KEEP IT SIMPLE ON MY ‘ELF…reference to another health mantra from a couple articles ago…sigh).

Me being annoyed I cry at “Interstellar”

Anyways. Enjoy every sandwich.

I truly appreciate it when friends who have known me for a very long time, and especially since “the angry years,” can point out that there is a marked difference in my attitude. I’ve been trying to work at this for a while to varying results, which if you are close to me, you can also probably attest to. Which, again, might sound trite. But when your therapist tells you your homework is to actually notice when you enjoy things, ya know you ain’t doing it. But from the truly, TRULY amazing feeling of sharing these Orchid shows with people and my band over the past couple of years to thousands of people, to literally just looking at the mountain out my window and thinking, “Hey, pretty nice mountain”. I’m working hard to notice as many big and small moments as I can and enjoy every sandwich. This is my birthday gift which I am trying to continue to give to myself.

And look, ideally, this leads to me being the meme down the line that people share to either make themselves feel better in their current lives OR beat themselves up with. Something like “Did you know Geoff Garlock didn’t publish his first horror novel until he was 48! THERE IS STILL TIME FOR US ALL TO ENJOY THAT SANDWICH”.

Actual pic of me when I publish first book.

Thank you for reading! Now what?

Hey thanks so much for reading.

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Where else can you find Garlock stuff?

-Go listen to 108.9 The Hawk, the greatest podcast about a fictional failing classic rock station. If you are reading this the week it came out, we are giving you a month of best of episodes by year for the entire month of December. It’s a great way to catch up on or get into the Hawk. Currently our “Best of 2023” is up for a listen.