07/25/25

How silly of me to think the worst thing in the world at one point was to become storage. Let me explain what I mean by this, at one point, while I was still on my road to becoming a writer and educator, I had a dream that I was left in a storage container with all my office supplies, sitting at my desk, my siblings slamming the door to the container shut on me and telling me curtly that they are moving away. They will see me a few months down the line, they say as they drive off, leaving me screaming and crying at my desk. 

            The scary part of that dream was that I had built almost all the things that surrounded me; some of them I had paid for with the money I earned from writing, while the rest I had saved from my student days. But, everything up to that point in my life could be compiled into a tiny, shallow shipping container, no bigger than an allotted office space in any regular corporate building. Additionally, I realized that my efforts to build a sparkling career didn’t matter; I was still abandoned.

            I think this is my worst fear so far, to perform at a top level and still end up being worthlessly abandoned despite it—that my only supporter of my success is me, and anyone I think is on my side is just there to leave. 

            I feel that fear creeping up on me even now, even years later, as I’ve started to enjoy the storage container I’ve been living in for five years. I couldn’t remember what the outside looked like, so I tried to join a theater class. The class gave me what it could for the time I was there, and when my time was up, it booted me out—another stray not meant for theater life. I went there in hopes of finding my way again, that one wish is all I asked for, and that one wish is all it gave me, along with a mirror reflection of who I really am—my play within a play. So, I might still be living in a shipping container, but I am more self-aware and I know my strengths. 

            I am one step ahead of myself, now that I know myself and my gifts.

            I exist in the arts.

            I am a wicked smart woman with a lifetime of research to compile into books.

            Only true love and genuine friendships are meant for me. Now, it is my job to seek them out. I guess I hadn’t realized I needed a reason to venture out of the storage container again; reasons to live beyond my work; reasons to laugh and smile. No one trapped me but myself; I was just given a hard reality slap by the Universe to figure it out.

            I cannot live a life dedicated solely to work. I must live to live.

Thank you for thinking this through with me.

Yours, in thought and practice,

Nicole Asbjorn