post collision

As you can see from my last post, my worlds did officially collide today. I've been working on a high profile project that I have alluded to here only as regards the personal stress factor. At the same time, I've been discerning a religious vocation - which is a well documented fact on this blog. Last Friday, I got a call from a reporter who had managed to put my personal and professional selves together and thought they made good copy. He'd also googled me and found a recent fairly unpleasant article from a few weeks ago (in the reporter's own publication) and my blog as the top two hits. I decided to answer his questions about this personal vocation journey because a) I have nothing to hide and b) its good for folks to know YES, people still do this. The article even lists the blog, so I've had quite a number of new local visitors today (welcome!).

This is a cautionary tale for my fellow bloggers. I added my full name to the blog a few months ago when I was nominated for a Catholic Blog Award. It was a conscious decision. I'm not ashamed of what is written here, no matter how neurotic or "churchy" it may seem to the unsuspecting browser! But I am very happy with my decision not to blog specifics about other people or work. I'd suggest that to other bloggers as a rule of thumb … I can't imagine how I'd be feeling today if I hadn't made those decisions when I first started publishing my random musings.

All in all I have escaped fairly unscathed from the collision of my worlds. For one thing, I no longer have to worry about telling the entire world. Although there is a bit of back story to be filled in. One thing I've discovered over the past year as I've shared the news is that everyone has a completely different preconceived notion of what it means to be a Sister. And most of those notions are very different from my lived reality.

Today I've had our local security guard, some coworkers and members of the public say "Read about you in Willamette Week. Congratulations!." That's a fairly good response I'd say. So the world has not ended. All will be well. All shall be well. All manner of things will be well.

And as the counter tells me at the bottom of my blog … 3 months, 3 weeks and 2 days to go. Not that anyone's counting ;) …