Let's see, LW...

You've been in the same company way too long.

Your experience isn't broad enough.

They took a chance on you -- and within months hired someone over you who can absorb your job when you are forced out and work with the younger folks who are waiting to move up and see you as a fossil blocking their paths.

Didn't you get the memo about the economy crashing and companies cutting staff to the bone? The company doesn't need two of you doing the same job. And they sure as hell didn't hire the new guy to be your mentor.

Don't focus on making nice with new guy. Make a killer portfolio and get hustling. Save every penny you can and prepare for the worst. Consider every Friday afternoon without a call to the boss' office a stay of execution.

While you're still there, find new and creative projects that expand your external visibility without offending the new guy. Watch closely to see whether your old power base is still there or in his camp. But keep the focus on getting out...and finding a mentor outside the firm who can help you make sure you don't get cockblocked like this again.

I grew up in the 1950s, back when there really was a culture of social drinking, yet by the time I was seven I knew enough to take the car keys away from my father when he was drunk. By the time I was in high school we saw movies about drinking and driving -- and still lost a car full of friends when in a buzz they misjudged the speed of an oncoming train. The fact that drunk driving accidents happen doesn't mean drunk driving is acceptable. Ever.

Susan Cheever, unless you are time traveling from another era, you aren't living in a culture that accepts drinking and driving. Must we cite the decades of After School Specials, Lifetime channel movies and endless demonstrations of smashed cars on high school lawns proving just how much and how long people have been making it clear that driving drunk is not understandable...

You may be sober but your still are making excuses for behavior that is just unacceptable.

Alcoholism is an illness, not an excuse. Drivers who have diabetes have a responsibility to manage their blood sugar; epileptics need to be seizure free. Drunks need to give up their keys, give their kids to responsible adults and then destroy their own lives without endangering others.

To do otherwise isn't a result of disease but of deliberate disregard for anyone but yourself.

Be proud of your sobriety, but don't for a minute think your binges weren't really that bad. Just because nobody in your life ended up in the emergency room doesn't mean they weren't seriously hurt.

I'm not sure what's sadder, the fact that you studied PRINT journalism or the fact that there are schools still teaching it. If that was your major, did you have a minor in blacksmithing?

I don't mean to be cruel, but print journalism has been dying since you were in kindergarten, and paid journalism almost as long. The fact that you thought you could get a job when the best known byline writers are being forced out shows the same bad judgment that got you that DUI.

Writers now are like musicians and artists and athletes. A few make a living doing what they love, a few more find a way to have a career related to their passion, the rest work in an unrelated field to support their passion. The key word is passion. You write because that's what you do, not because someone pays you.

And you realize that writing is just a piece of the package, the way cooking is just a piece of being a successful chef. You have to write and do TV and radio and online work and books and schmooze and be a personality. That's reality. Think George Will, Rachel Ray, Ryan Seacrest. Tiger Woods makes more off the course than on it.

Get real and get a job doing something you can love while you pursue writing on the side. Find something really weird you can do for a living that will make an interesting book. In the meantime, write about ice cream making. Write about finding your way out of ice cream making. Write about drinking, and about learning not to drink. Read what great writers have written about drinking and get a lesson in humility. Meet with other writers and learn how they have survived.

You say you are paralyzed. If so, your focus shouldn't be on running a marathon, but on taking that first step.

I am so lucky.

I got pregnant in college, got married, had two daughters -- and had my tubes tied at 23, while I was still in the hospital for the delivery of the second child. I never planned to get married or have kids, but life happens. I adore them and their husbands and the six grandkids they created, yet my life would have been complete without children.

I was lucky enough to have two wonderful women doctors who trusted my decision, which I have never regretted for one minute.

Sadly, I had a friend who had two kids and developed a medical condition that ruled out using the pill. She begged her docs to tie her tubes but they refused, then when she got pregnant told her abortion was her only option because the pregnancy would kill both her and the child. She agreed, but was devastated. The docs finally granted her request, but the process was cruel and pointless.

I was horrified by her situation, and I am horrified that men and women today aren't being allowed to make the same decision I made more than 30 years ago.