I sit here, at work, listening to all the distinct sounds around me. The whistling noise of the fan in the cash register, the humming of the freezer, the weird ticking noise that the grill makes. The last one sounds kind of disturbing, as if the grill were melting itself from the inside. That thing is a disaster waiting to happen, I tell you. It is in this space that I work the best. It is here that I, locked away from the world, at least until it comes to me, do my best and most creative thinking. It is here that I write symphonies and compose entire tracks, from the drums to the vocals. This place is a wall of sounds.

What is weird is you don‘t really hear them. It‘s just noise in the background, filling the sound space like the quickly gathering smoke from a newly lit fire. And you do not truly begin to appreciate and understand, just how much noise there is around us until you take it all away and experience the true absence of all things. Those times when it‘s so hauntingly silent that you can‘t walk around for the fear of waking someone from their sleep.

Now fear, that‘s an interesting thing. Today I went to buy a table. Except I didn‘t. I looked at tables, I contemplated the act of purchasing but in the end I chickened out. Call it what you want, a fear of people, of failure, of the unknown, whatever. I know it‘s holding me back in so many ways. And the worst part is, I know I can overcome it at any moment. I just need to get myself firmly in my own control. And that is something I am not today. In control.

Some girls walk in, clearly inebriated.

„Are you alone here at night?“

Yes, I answer. There isn‘t enough traffic through here to warrant another person.

„Oh, well at smárinn they have a security guard every night.“

I smirk slightly, and reply.

„That‘s cause there are so many dangerous people in Kópavogur.“

She laughs. Her friends starts shouting about their single friend and tries to give me her number in a rather backwards fashion. I service them and get on with my life. Maybe there was a thing there, I don‘t know. I am too busy being at work to go chasing after a maybe. And they were drunk, too. That always tips the scale in a weird direction.

Still, I pride myself in my little moment of confidence. A joke, well told, and a situation well handled.

It‘s the little victories that count.

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