My Senior Year

Blogging since 2006, journaling since 1985, writing since as long as I can remember

WTF Am I Here?

I am 51 years old and on the cusp of starting my senior year in college in Texas at a liberal arts institution. Before that, I was the assistant director of a university press, a children’s book blogger, a photographer, an advertising executive, a New Yorker, a flack for cookbooks at Artisan Books, a publishing coordinator for the Muppets, assistant to the VP of children’s books at Barnes’s and Noble, a bookstore manager, a Virginian, an actress, a poet, a doodler, a South Carolinian, a one-time Indianian (is that a word?), and a born Floridian, and the daughter of an artist and a musician/museum director. In the spring of 2025, I will graduate with an English degree with minors in creative writing and art. I am also a mother and wife.

Why am I telling you this?

My entire professional life, I’ve worked to uplift other people’s art, writing, creative spirit. I dropped out of college early to move to New York because I wanted to be Spalding Grey. I had one parent who quit his art to work a real job, and another parent who stayed true to her art and was always broke and scrambling. Terrified of ending up down that same path, I let my bookselling day job get the best of me and gave up trying to be an actress/writer and went to work in publishing. It’s been an absolutely glorious life but thirty plus years of it have left me pretty empty. First, I gave my soul to earning money. I went back to school here and there, but never returned in a meaningful way, and life just happened. Then I gave my soul to my son who was absolutely the best thing that ever happened to me. But as the great Maurice Sendak once said, “You can’t be an artist and a parent and be truly good at either one.” Then the great upheaval of Trump/Covid/George Floyd happened, while menopause was raging, and I finally decided to call it quits. Fuck it. You only get one chance at this, and though I’ve flown mighty close to the sun, it’s never been with my own wings and on my own terms.

What happens now?

After a few years working at a university press, I started taking classes on my lunch break. The school allowed me one class a semester free, so I thought, I am here anyways, might as well make the best of it. 100 credits and ten years later, I am eight classes away from finishing, so I quit my job to go back full time and get it over with in one fell swoop. In July, I’ll go back full time, and graduate in May 2025. Then hopefully graduate school. In the meantime, I am deep into the second draft of a novel, and thinking about what my senior thesis will be. This?

That’s it. Come along with me as I slouch my way towards graduation. Subscribe, comment, and keep in touch.

Thanks for reading Burgin’s Substack!