I got an e-mail from somebody at the university inviting me to write an essay on the subject “This I Believe”. Don’t get excited for me, it wasn’t a personal invitation, but rather a mass e-mail to the university community, inviting us all to participate in this project. It’s a small part of a national project, where people write a short (350-500 word) essay about what they believe. It’s an opportunity for both publication and for recording.

I got excited about it. I had heard about this project month’s ago, through This American Life. The essays featured on that podcast were This I Used to Believe, which inherently have more purpose since the concept itself necessitates a conflict. If you’ve spoken to me in the last seven months, you know that I’m mildly obsessed with the show. The best $3 I’ve spent in the last year was on the archive app. But anyway, that episode was one that really stuck with me.

So I started thinking about topics for the essay. I was at work, so I jotted down concepts on post-it notes, and by the end of the day, I had four of them filled with terrible ideas. At the end of the day, I threw them in my purse and have since lost them. I was hoping for something quietly brilliant – something most people encounter during their lives and something I could also personalize. Basically, I wanted to write a good personal essay. Which is what I always want to do.

I’m still stumped though. What do I believe in? Right now, I believe in sitting at a cafe and drinking both coffee and chai. I also believe in listening to Goldfrapp on crappy headphones. I also believe it’s strange that at the table over, there are two guys having what looks like a business meeting on a Sunday morning. These are awful topics to write about, even to mention in a silly blog, so I’m trying to ask myself more specific questions: What are my

I believe that I’m responsible for my life and destiny. I’m a little bothered by the word destiny since it implies a sort of fatalism, and I’m not sure I believe in that either. I think that things happened and we’re all forced to play with the cards we’re dealt (and to use cliche metaphors, apparently). I believe in tolerance of other lifestyles and belief systems. I believe in maturation – I find great comfort in the fact that people are dynamic. We’re notcore beliefs? What gets me through the day?