Earning my curmudgeon status has me thrilled and I’m bubbling with energy that I can be cranky any old cantankerous time I wish. On February 2, 2026 is the day I am turning 61 years old (you got that right: on Groundhog Day, every year for the last 61 of them, create your own damn meaning). Each and every one of us lives inside a bubble called our one splendid life. What I decided to do with mine is sit at a Hawai’i Island picnic bench, splendidly near an ocean beach, to scribble my recollections on addiction—in other words, a temperament memoir or how a woman like myself gets hooked, stays hooked, and eventually she lets go of hooking (not that kind) with incredible help from big-hearted other bubblers.

After that I sat at a small desk in a once ratty then colorfully painted and renovated apartment to write a screenplay. Following next was a novel called Sweet Spot and she generated herself; I was grateful to be at the keyboard when those prose words floated downward from my bubble. Continually inside and parallel to these creative worlds, I scribbled a very tall stack of nonfiction essays.

Many are online at http://www.hawaiitalkstorying.com. You might know this because reading this essay is where you be. In the moment. Or what I call fully living inside the bubble. After these writings bubbled to the laptop screen surface—then nothing else did. Nada. Zilch. Ghosts. Silence. And thank goodness, for now I have deeply learned how to let go of my bubble.

The process is an easy one simply requiring that you crack your heart wide open and continue sweeping up those muscle scraps, like chunky salt granules, swept into a narrow dustpan. An old-fashioned broom, made of bundled thin, adept corn twigs, doing the work. Has simply been a witchey nightmare. Hence, I have been earning my privilege to be cranky any old damn time I wish. You can go there, too. Simply write nonstop for five years and have nothing evolve. Call me when you achieve this goal for being spit-fire cussy together. We can idly sit around and over caffeinate at a café too damn Hawai’i-expensive. I’m down for the up bubbling.

And on the truly thank goddess side a slim book taught me how to go there. Shakti Gawain’s Creative Visualization has a subtitle that stakes her claim: The Inspirational Bestseller That Has Led Thousands to the Fulfillment of Their Desires Through the Art of Mental Energy and Affirmation. I can imaginatively hear and see that deep eye roll of yours. And, really? We are in the bubble, one writer and her fledgling (nonexistent?) readership.

A strategy that Gawain calls the “Pink Bubble Technique” is on page 73. At just a few hundred words long, she writes succinctly. Noticed I have that spiritual intuitive awareness can be lightning fast. Highly recommend reading this book if a life dream has ever wandered across your consciousness. She concludes that “the third step is to let go of the bubble and imagine it floating off into the universe, still containing your vision.” Floating your dream on a bubbly return to the universe gives her the chance to confirm how real the dream is. We call this spiritual reciprocity. Look for signs. Yes, and sure I will share the entire Gawain passage since the prose is brief enough to meet copyright requirements and can you be patient, anyway?

Entirely reason why I caught my breathe and patiently mumbled, “I see your signage, spirit guide universe.” At the kitchen sink a few morning’s ago I went to wash a few dishes once breakfast prep (culinarily aligned French toast sprinkled with organic cane sugar and cinnamon) was achieved and I saw a bubble. Pristinely circular and momentarily at peace. So is my dream to be a well-received writer. The next morning, I saw a bubble on a peppermint soap bottle that has never appeared there before. And this morning I saw a bright pink bubble when I went to meditate, closing my eyes and still seeing signage. So, I have let my ambition go or as Gawain explains my dream is now “free to float around in the universe, attracting and gathering energy…there is nothing more you need to do.” Well, okay then. No reason to be so damn cranky, after all.