The compulsion to write is strong. For some, very strong, which is why those people - true writers - eventually reach their goals. Writing is a craft, of course, but it's just as important to remember it's a job, and hopefully, a career. The goal is to have your work in print, whether that be a literary or consumer magazine, a book or even an e-book. The options are endless, really, especially now that most writers have blogs, twitter-feeds and facebook fan pages. Getting work out there isn't a problem. Getting paid for that work can be.

When I wrote my first article, I was literally shaking with excitement. But I worried about whether I was good enough. I worried that other people wouldn't like it. I worried I wasn't really a writer.

I'm not sure you ever completely surmount all those fears, but as Dr. Oz says, "Put it out there." Your work, that is. Each time you write something, you learn more about the craft.

You'll get rejected. It's possible you'll get rejected quite a lot. One writer told me she received over 80 rejection letters before she found an agent. She's gone on to write multiple New York Times bestsellers. Sometimes, people simply don't see the genius, but some times, the timing is off. It's hard to get both right; that's why you have to keep writing, keep querying, and above all, remember you are a writer. That doesn't mean it'll be easy or simple, it doesn't make success a given, but it does mean you have something worthwhile to say.

So say it, on paper or on your screen. Write them down, and feel their power.

My bottle was the 2008 Sonoma County Zinfandel. The color was simply gorgeous: maroon with hints of cherry. The wine was lovely as well. Rosenblum says of this wine, "Red fruit that flares around a rich,
brambly berry core touched by toasted oak and cloves. Dark fruit lingers with a nice grip on the finish, leaving a lasting impression." Yes, I agree with the lasting impression. And I get a mouthful of blackberries when I sip this one.

The winery is located in Alameda, California and is a highly recommended stop. Veterinarian Kent Rosenblum founded the vineyard with his wife Kathy back in 1978. Zinfandel is their specialty - and it is special. Part of that may be because the Rosenblums pick their grapes very ripe, which helps to manage the potential bitterness of the tannins.

I also have to say that the $9.99 I paid at Trader Joe's is the least I've seen this bottle anywhere. PIck up a few bottles: it's fabulous with anything grilled.

I heard an interview yesterday about a new book that's tackling some of the issues in Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique.

Great. Let me tell you, we women still have issues.

I agree that many of the issues are different from those felt by Friedan and her contemporaries nearly 50 years ago. But for some reason, we women don't seem capable of true contentment. As one phone caller said, "My mother told me to live my life before I get married and have a family." Her point was that once she started down  married-with-children road, she as an individual ceased to exist.

That's so wrong.

My husband's point was that no man wants to get married and discover he's destroyed the life of the woman he loves. I can say the same in reverse.

And it's not that our lives are destroyed. They're...more complicated. Women feel the need to be completely involved as mothers but also have identities separate from our families. Many women are able to carry this load with grace and ease. Others struggle to find a balance.

I think that's the key: balance. No person can't be everything to everyone all the time. There have been many, many articles written about how to take time for oneself; by refreshing that inner core, one is much more able to be there for loved ones. While that makes sense, it also goes to show that we - as women - need to have a frank discussion about what it means to be a wife, a mother and an individual.

Note I didn't say professional. Not all women want to work (nor do all men). And you know what, that's great - as long as you can afford to do so. Perhaps if we assessed our individual goals, we'd not let the "prevailing wisdom" of the day make us feel less good about our choices.

We aren't going to be happy all the time. No one is. But we can at last be content with our decisions. After all, regrets really aren't useful. Or healthy.

Publishers Weekly posted an article by Marc Schultz today titled, "Upcoming NewSouth 'Huck Finn' Eliminates the 'N' Word". The reason? Teachers aren't reading it in classes anymore even though it is one of the definitive works of American literature. Should publishers and editors be allowed to change writers' words? And would Twain want the word changed if it meant another generation of children read his story? I don't know the answers to these questions, but I think the choice to "update" Finn and make him politically correct is an intriguing and controversial idea. Perhaps that's the point.

Below are excerpts from Schultz's article. You may read the entire piece here .

Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a classic by most any measure—T.S. Eliot called it a masterpiece, and Ernest Hemingway pronounced it the source of "all modern American literature." Yet, for decades, it has been disappearing from grade school curricula across the country, relegated to optional reading lists, or banned outright, appearing again and again on lists of the nation's most challenged books, and all for its repeated use of a single, singularly offensive word: "nigger."

Rather than see Twain's most important work succumb to that fate, Twain scholar Alan Gribben and NewSouth Books plan to release a version of Huckleberry Finn, in a single volume with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, that does away with the "n" word (as well as the "in" word, "Injun") by replacing it with the word "slave."

"This is not an effort to render Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn colorblind," said Gribben, speaking from his office at Auburn University at Montgomery, where he's spent most of the past 20 years heading the English department. "Race matters in these books. It's a matter of how you express that in the 21st century."

The headlines for the past couple days show how hard the US House of Representatives is working: Reading the Constitution, Cutting its budget by 5 percent.

I call it showboating. These people have one of the cushiest jobs in the country. The average pay is $174,000 a year, roughly three and a half times higher than the median income in this country (which the census claims to be $52,029). On top of that inflated salary - which gets a cost of living raise each year - congress also gets health benefits and a retirement pension.

That 5% budget cut did slash $35 million from our deficit; that is a great step. But what the headline doesn't state is that the House of Representatives have seen a 14 percent increase in spending since 2008, the same year so many Americans began to lose their jobs. So Congress has given itself raises and more money while bemoaning the huge deficits and the lack of jobs for the average American.

Is it any wonder why the average American feels so much disdain for our politicians? Here are some simple ideas for improving those abysmal approval ratings:

Cut your salaries by 10 percent or more. Most teachers and other workers have taken bigger pay cuts over the past few years. So should you.

Reduce your staff and answer your own emails and letter - it's called increased efficiency.

Cut all pork-barrel spending. Period.

Enact some - and preferably all - of the spending cuts put forth in this recent Esquire article.

Stop spending time on TV shows and fighting over bills; spend those hours working together to actually legislate. Even if its a compromise.

And most importantly, stop telling us you are working for us. You aren't. You are working to keep your cushy job and big salary. We know this. And we don't like it.

I know that everyone makes mistakes. I do all the time, much to my frustration. Mistakes can be a great learning tool. But Texas - the state I spent 30 years in - seems to do mistakes bigger than everyone else, too.

Here's a perfect example from today's headlines:

Texan declared innocent after 30 years in prison

That is really sad for Dupree, the man wrongly accused of the crime. But it's costing the state a boatload of money. Here's what the article goes on to state:

Under Texas compensation laws for the wrongly imprisoned, Dupree is eligible for $80,000 for each year he was behind bars, plus a lifetime annuity. He could receive $2.4 million in a lump sum that is not subject to federal income tax.

The compensation law, the nation's most generous, was passed in 2009 by the Texas Legislature after dozens of wrongly convicted men were released from prison. Texas has freed 41 wrongly convicted inmates through DNA since 2001 — more than any other state.

I believe that Dupree does deserve compensation. The man spent 30 years in jail for a crime he didn't commit! And he can never have those years back. That's horrible.

But 41 wrongly accused people in the last 10 years? Come on, Texas. That's a lot of money and wasted man power. More importantly, that means a lot of actual criminals are running around outside bars because of the mistakes.

One way to shore up the state's budget is to stop convicting the wrong person. It would save time and a whole lot of money, money the state doesn't have to spend right now. So, Texas, I hope you've learned from your mistakes. And I really, really hope we don't see another headline like today's.

For the past ten years, I've been waiting for politicians and political pundits to stop acting like three-year-old protecting a toy in the sandbox.

It hasn't happened.

Yes, I know we're not supposed to talk about politics. Nor are we supposed to talk about religion, but I'm noticing we're talking about both - slyly, for our own agendas - quite a bit.

I've been studying the history of Santa Fe, NM. The Spanish - for all their faults (which were many!) - were able to intermarry and coexist relatively peacefully with the natives, Africans and other groups that were either already in the territory or came to it. That is part of our legacy as Americans. Unfortunately, I still do not see this as the mainstream course of action. People seem to like to fight. Often and loudly.

What happened to respect thy neighbor? What happened to offering someone the dignity of listening to their opinion without talking over them? While I may like my ideas better, they are mine, not yours. And it's relatively rare that I will be able to change anyone's views, whether it be on something as trivial as cereal brands or as major as the environmental legislation that has stalled in D.C. That's OK as long as we can recognize a common goal: leaving our country better than we found it.

I am quickly moving from frustration to fear. Our country is polarizing on two opposite ends of the political spectrum; each feels its camp has all the right answers. This is the exact fiasco Abraham Lincoln warned against: "Nearly all men can withstand adversity; If you want to test a man's character, give him power."

But perhaps the most apropos quote is the one by Gore Vidal: "Politics is made up of two words. 'Poli' which is Greek for 'many,' and 'tics,' which are bloodsucking insects."

I can't say that I was shocked by the numbers in this Huffington Post article. What does leave me aghast is the fact that so many people are undergoing painful treatments that do not prolong life but incur incredibly large debts. I can't say how I'd react in this situation: I think I'd want to explore every option to save my husband and kids, but would I want them to do the same for me? I can't be so sure. I don't like the idea of leaving my family with massive debt. And I probably want to have some peace and comfort in my last days on earth -- to spend with those I love.

Articles like these shows the need for better education. If Americans were well-versed on their choices I think the ratios listed might be very different.

I have one major, huge pet peeve about political campaigns: candidates exaggerate the truth. Why? To makes the candidate look good and the opponent look bad, of course. It's also called mudslinging. Whatever you want to call it, it can make finding the truth about a candidate difficult.

That's why I spend time on factcheck.org . I can research what candidates have said and compare their statements to the actual facts. It's not affiliated with any political party that I can tell, and it gives a (relatively) neutral view of the races based on the facts.

That's the key for me: I want to know the real story. Politicans can - and do - spin all they want. Hey, they have an election to win. I want to know what they actually stand for and if I think that's a good match for my family and my community. I really don't care what they say. Campaign promises are just that - part of a campaign.

Where do you get your primary information on politics?

I'm a child of public schools. Texas, California and New South Wales, Australia. To help pay for college, I took a position as a math tutor for  TAAS (what Texas then called its standardized testing program).

I think the public school system doesn't get it right.

Now, let me also say that I'm a HUGE proponent of public schools. They do a very good job of teaching children basic concepts upon which the kids can build. Many - if not most - of the teachers who work there daily are excellent and truly care about providing each child with these basic skills.

But the testing that we as a nation have set as the benchmark for our educational system is ridiculous. Passing a standardized test does not tell me a child is capable of learning to read, understand basic math or science or has any level of creativity. Passing a standardized test means simply the child got more multiple choice bubbles right on the ScanTron. For some kids, that's simply good guessing.

For some children, testing of any kind causes them to freeze. That results in very poor performance on that test. Other students are great at memorization and can remember the answers long enough to take the test. Still others stumble over certain concepts because of a question they don't understand. Quite frankly, I think none of these actually helps kids learn. I mean really, truly learn and apply that knowledge to other disciplines and moments in life.

And isn't that what we're supposed to be teaching? I want my children to want to learn - I want them to ask difficult questions and miss obvious answers. I want them to be engaged in the learning process. Because then they will take something intangible away from each lesson: they will take curiosity. They will want to come back and learn something new. They will apply that knowledge and build from it.

I understand that some aspects of learning will always be rote: sight words like "a" and "the" are best learned through memorization. Same goes with the multiplication table. It's a boring way to learn, but it's necessary. What I don't get is why we need to teach our kids history, science and even math that way. Wouldn't it be more interesting to show just how much math there is in music and art? What about a re-creating a court of law for high school students instead of having them read about the procedures in a government textbook?

We know kids do better when they explore the outdoors, so take more field trips to a local garden to teach botany and horticulture. The best case scenario would be for the kids to walk to that garden and get some exercise along with a lesson.

My point is that there are better, more engaged methods for teaching concepts. Ones that kids would be pretty open to exploring. And I think teachers would appreciate not being stymied by the unreachable goal of improving standardized test scores year after year (do we really, honestly think 100 percent of students will pass these tests)?

I want my kids to want to learn. Let's have a discussion about how make that happen. My guess is that most schools would improve their overall scores if we engaged the students in the learning process. It's the kids' education, after all. Shouldn't they have some say in how they're being taught?