Love Languages

If you have never read the book, The 5 Love Languages, you definitely need to. This will get you thinking about how to interact with the people around you as well as help you communicate love to those you care about. You should take a minute to assess yourself to see what your love language is. You can do this by reading the book (which I recommend) or you can simply take a 5 minute assessment online at: http://www.5lovelanguages.com/assessments/love/

During my Freshman year at Mid Atlantic Christian University I took a class that used this book as one of the textbooks. I learned a lot about myself and found that I am VERY much a Quality Time person. I have seen this to be very true in my relationship with my wifey. We are very different than many couples where we both want to spend as much time together as possible. Our goal is to always wake up together, work together, eat meals together, and do life together. It stresses both of us out when we are apart, even for a short time, because we both feel loved and show love through our quality time.

Here are my scores:

3 Words of Affirmation

12 Quality Time

5 Receiving Gifts

2 Acts of Service

8 Physical Touch

With this being said, I often desire to show love though through quality time, but also often through gifts. I am very purposeful in the gifts that I give to those I care about. I even have a folder in my phone called "Gift Ideas" where I write down things that come to mind that people would like. For instance, if I hear someone say that they would really want a certain coffee mug or something like that I will try and remember that and make it happen. I spend time with those I love but often this is difficult and so sometimes a well thought out gift will suffice.

Coffee Shop

One day my wife and I want to own a coffee shop. We believe that this can be a fun and exciting way to do ministry. We will be very purposeful in the people we higher, events we hold, in the way we decorate and arrange things, and pretty much everything. We do not want this to be the "christian getaway" but rather more like the gorilla lovers tactics and catch people by surprise. So, this is what I think about on a regular basis. Someday's I find it motivation to get up. I get out of bed and think, "Today, I'll go to muddies and think about owning a place like this." And whenever we travel, which is about once a month, I try and find a neat local coffee shop to take notes on.

Here's our last coffee shop visit:

Double D's Coffee Asheville NC

I have a memo in my phone where I write down ideas dealing with our future coffee shop, here are a few:

Market: Coffee drinkers, people who like art, college students, old people, business people, people who walk their dogs, chess players. Then I have ways written out to pull all these types of people in: creating a walking route around the city where x coffee shop is a stop, free wifi, music nights, displaying and selling local art, college discount nights with music, locals or regulars discounts.

While these may seem like simple ideas, they are much more vast and broken down into much greater detail in my head.

I also have been thinking about ways to partner with churches, encourage discipleship, evangelize, and connect with dignitaries/important people.

Anyways, this is just something I think about on a regular basis and so I wanted to share it. If you would like to share back, what would be a good name for this future coffee shop?

Quirky College Life

At MACU there are a lot of little things that in another location would seem VERY peculiar...


Someone sneezes 7 times and you get to spot whatever you're doing and enjoy some free time.

If a bell rings, everyone stops what they are doing and then sings as if they were intoxicated.

Walking on the grass is done in fear of ones life.

A break in one of the most busy times of the year for a day outside with friends.

Food cannot be "to go" and outside food is considered contaminated.

Everyone knowing the words to "wonderful the matchless grace of Jesus."

Every student skipping class for a day to hang out, and that being okay.

Seeing people dressed up like colonial's and remembering that it must be constitution week.

Being able to say that you have eaten with every professor and staff member.

And not just knowing everyone's names but actually knowing them as an individual.


While MACU is a different kind of culture, I really have grown to appreciate its quirkiness.

Advertisements

I would imagine that for most people, advertisements simply don't work. We usually pick a product because we tried it somewhere else and liked it or a friend recommended it and so we start to use it. I, on the other hand, take advertisements very seriously...specifically the pictures.

Honestly: Which of these cats look happier?

or


See, some of these things are important to consider. For instance toilet paper, would you rather use angel soft and have a baby determine what kind of tp you should use or would you rather have quilted northern and have your grandma decide. I trust my grandma far more than a baby.

These are some things that you should consider the next time you go shopping.

Bathrooms and Snow Cones

Here's a little insight into my life:

I constantly think about how to make things better then they already are, to improve every situation or company in some way. For instance, the other day I used the restroom at a local coffee shop. While in there I thought about how they should put some time into making the bathroom better. For starters they could bring some speaker wire and splice the music from the lobby into the bathroom to create a better atmosphere. They could also ask one of the local art schools to do a mural or paint the door in a creative way. This could also get them a few more customers. While I wash my hands I think about how they could put a better sink in there, put some soft rocks into the bottom of the sink and buy some nicer soap. I also thought about how they could have a local photography group or school do some local shots and place them around the place.

While at the snowcone barn I think about how there are 3 snowcone places in town and that this one needs something that makes them unique to the other ones. They could possibly go to some garage sales and get some nicer chairs. They could go mobile and hit up ball games and local events around town. I pondered the idea of having special days where everything was half off or certain flavor combinations were special.

At the time these thoughts and ideas seem very important, but then i remember that sadly, I don't rule the world and that sometimes bathrooms and snowcone places don't have to be perfect.

Opps

So I realized today after a lot of confusion that I have two blogger accounts...one uses just coreyrayjones as the username while the other one is coreyrayjones@yahoo.com NOW THAT IS CONFUSING! sorry to anyone that finds the other, because I never blog, and will especially never blog on that other account... yikes

Now that I have this figured out, I would like to post semi often, so enjoy.

The Birthday

Growing up I never liked the acknowledgment of my birthday. I would desire to be allowed to stay home from school and I would rejoice the years when my birthday was on a Saturday. I did not like birthday cards, while I loved what normally came inside them. I did not even like having birthday parties. My goal was to always have a bon fire or something around the time of my birthday so that people could come over but that I was not "special" for the occasion. A few of my favorite birthday memories include, having someone fall down the stairs while holding my sweet new voice recorder and then listening to the thuds over and over again. That was a great party. I also enjoyed my first birthday at college because no one knew, and my parents forgot. My least favorite birthday memories were when everyone sang to me on the bus, I cried when I got off the bus. I also remembered when I turned 20 and my grandma who always sends me 50 bucks sent me 20 for my 20th. That was sad. Probably my main disappointment over the years was wanting something unparticular, telling my family, and not getting it. I would always expect to get it, but disappointingly get something else. The other thing would be cool, like a Foosball table, but because I wanted something simple, and normally less expensive than the other gift, I would always be disappointed. Like the year I wanted a game called splat but got a game called sorry. While sorry is actually cooler than splat, I wanted splat and therefore didn't like sorry.

Overall, it was never the gift or remembering the day, it was always being special that I did not like most. It was not like I accomplished something or did something great, I just didn't die for another year. Birthdays have always made me just simply want to be praised for something that I have actually done or worked for, and for this reason most birthdays have been a disappointment.

I have felt this way for many years, and now that I have written it out, I feel better about it. See there is a point to having a blog.

Old school cartoon

The dream

Imagine beginning your day and just feeling like something is off. You have no reason to believe that there is anything wrong but you simply feel off. You continue your day as if everything were okay but as you go about your schedule you just know that something is wrong. Then it happens…always different but always the same…you bite down on something and crack a tooth…you feel a tooth is loose and before you know it that tooth falls out…or you hit your mouth on something and accidentally knock a tooth out. It’s painful…every time. It’s bloody…every time. And every time it happens you think, “this is just like in my dream.” Each and every time is just like in my dream. It always happens differently and it is always so real. I think or say out loud, “I knew it would eventually happen, and today’s the day.” And then it happens again, another tooth. Again painful…again bloody. Sometimes it ends here with a mouth full of blood other times they all fall out. The end result is always the same: Hopeless, Pain, Sickening…

I have a reoccurring nightmare of pain and blood where my teeth fall out about two or three times a month. Every night it is real and every night I wake up feeling hopeless, pain, and sick. And the odd thing about all of this is that I actually hope for the day when my teeth do fall out so that I will know that it truly is a dream.