AuntieJan's Journal, 03 May 11

I have discovered that I do a lot of thinking while I am doing my minutes on the treadmill, stuff just comes to me and a lot of times I say to myself "I should write about this today!" and sometimes I do.

I've journaled before about how much I love music and how much I get into my workout playing my music; and that I enjoy a wide variety of genres. When I was younger I remember having a much more limited taste in music; to me, back then, the only music worth listening to was rock n' roll, jazz, blues, and bluegrass country. Everything else was crap. I had specific categories and if it fell outside of those, forget it. Little did I know that eschewing everything else made me miss a lot of good music.

But as time went on I allowed myself a more open mind and began listening to everything, with perhaps the exception of extremely violent or graphically explicit hip hop or rap type stuff, it's not so much as I think it's bad (which some of it is) is that I just don't get anything from it.

Removing the hard line category rule from my head opened up a whole new world of appreciation and understanding that I never knew I had in me.

With all of that said, this actually relates to my thoughts from the treadmill yesterday, which is why do we limit ourselves by so strictly categorizing everything? Categories have labels, and labels often mean shallow thinking, pigeonholes and prejudice. The way I shunned certain music because it wasn't within my realm of understanding happens to fat people every day. We are shunned because we are (falsely) categorized as: (fill in the blank) lazy, stupid, of poor hygiene, gluttunous, ugly, or undesirable, etc.

Why? I know there are a million answers but largely because I think stereotypes are EASY. Neatly categorized and tucked away in the predjudices of the unfat or even worse the formerly fat, so they don't have to think about it much, or consider what kind of music that fat person really is. It doesn't matter, they have decided they don't like and will never like that kind of music, when in reality it's because that person doesn't appreciate or understand something so different from their status quo.

Anyway, to make a long entry longer, what I try to do when I encounter someone who doesn't like my music is to try to sniff out that pigeonholer and make sure I say something to that person that may not change their opinion, but it just might make them THINK a little more the next time they are forced to interact with a fat person like me. For instance, if I see that "look" in their eye I might immediately offer up a quick comment about something awesome that happened while I was in the gym that day. It's often a fun thing to actually witness a person's mind being blown right before your eyes.

I know I am really glad that I have all kinds of music in my collection, and hopefully over time that will continue to mature and grow. I am a much better person for it. Someday soon I will not be a fat person any longer, but I will always love that music.

Life is good. It really is!

Peace.

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1509 kcal

Fat: 44.59g | Prot: 82.90g | Carbs: 202.01g.   Breakfast: Chobani Nonfat Vanilla Yogurt, banana, Nature Valley Crunchy Cinnamon Bar, half and half, coffee. Lunch: Grapes (Red or Green, European Type Varieties Such As Thompson Seedless), cottage cheese 1%, Publix Wheat Crackers. Dinner: Olive Oil, chicken stock, Bell Peppers, Onions, broccoli, Atlantic Salmon (Farmed), Uncle Ben's Brown Rice. Snacks/Other: Weight Watchers Ice Cream Bars - Giant Chocolate Fudge, Nutella, Graham Crackers (Plain or Honey, Includes Cinnamon), seedless grapes, Publix Caramel Rice Snacks. more...

3617 kcal

Exercise: Exercise machine (moderate) - 10 minutes, Walking (exercise) - 3.5/mph - 25 minutes, Resting - 13 hours and 35 minutes, Stretching (yoga) - 15 minutes, Housework - 1 hour, Weight Training (moderate) - 30 minutes, Running (jogging) - 5/mph - 5 minutes, Sleeping - 8 hours. more...