In the meantime, I’ve made contact.  Yes, I showed my face (in public!) to meet up with a small group of fellow Pagans.  I’ve met them three times now.  They’re very nice.

I would say more about my fellow Pagans and my thoughts upon meeting them.  But this leads to the more pressing issue of just how specific I ought to get on this blog.  You can see that I’m speaking English, and probably have a good shot at guessing which country I’m in.  But should I tell you for sure?  Should I hint at which region of my country I live in?

Ha!  I just noticed that in my first post I mentioned that I am American.  There’s one detail I can’t hide anymore.

I suppose any blog by a Pagan ought to have nature pictures.  And I suppose that some of the astute naturalists among you may see my pictures, recognize the living things in them, and figure out roughly where I live.

Look, I just showed you that it’s cold here.  I just revealed a bit more than I needed to.

It’s not that I’m scared that people will find out that I’m a Pagan.  My immediate family would probably not be surprised.  My extended family certainly would be surprised, but I don’t intend to tell them any time soon.  I think my friends and colleagues would be surprised to find me embracing any sort of religion, and that Paganism is not especially more surprising than any other.  In fact, I think a full-throated endorsement of Christianity would be more surprising to most who know me.

You’ll note that I’m using “Paganism” as if it were a single religion and not a broad category of religions.  That’s because I haven’t yet been initiated into any particular tradition, and in any case I’m not ready to reveal which tradition I’m studying.  There, I just refrained from revealing something worth revealing.

This whole “making contact” thing is tricky business.  I need contacts, I need friends.  But I also feel the need to be discreet.  Every time I go sit at Starbucks with members of the local Shrine, I take the risk that someone I know will see me at a table full of people wearing pentacles.  Every word I write on the blog, I take the risk that it will somehow link the blog back to my real identity.

But it’s worth the risk if it means making contact.

I’m a married woman in my late twenties.  I’m in a very conservative, buttoned-down profession.  I wear a lot of J. Crew.  You would never guess that I’m a Pagan.  Most of the people who know me in real life have no idea.

If you saw me on the street, you would probably assume that I’m a lapsed Catholic (which I am).  I have had only sporadic interaction with other Pagans in real life, and they haven’t gone very well.  I tend not to fit in.  I don’t like sci fi, or ren faires, or Harry Potter.  I’m about the most vanilla upper-middle-class white American you could possibly imagine. 

But I’m a Pagan.  I’m not ashamed of being a Pagan.  But I’m not ashamed of being preppy and vanilla either. 

In beginning this blog, I am beginning another phase in my ongoing quest to reconcile these two important parts of my identity.  Can you be an out, practicing Pagan and a preppy vanilla suburbanite at the same time?

We’ll find out.