Well, it is.  It is about time.  I haven’t really been on here since May.  Wow.  I blogged so much for so long (comparatively) and then just dropped off the face of the blogging world.  I have thought many times about starting back up.  I have thought about trying to rebrand.  I have thought about starting over.  But the fact of the matter is that I haven’t been doing anything so just changing the name or focus won’t do anything.

So, here it is.  Same bat time, same bat channel.  Maybe this time I will get back into a rhythm and break out of my slump.  Maybe not.  But at the moment, I’m gonna give it a shot!  So this is my current attempt to stop being a one hit wonder (loosely using the term and not really claiming that I’m a wonder by any means!).  I may even try to blog again for tomorrow.  Guess you’ll just have to come back then and find out.

Until then, enjoy this!

It’s official!  Back on October 12, 2009, I made a goal for myself to blog every day for a year.  Well, October 11, 2010 came and went.  Yup.  That was a couple days ago.  Did I remember?  Nope.  I even blogged at 7 days remaining.  I still forgot.  Oops.  I never said my goal was to be smart for a whole year!

So, yeah!  365 straight days (or 367 actually since I can’t seem to remember the major milestones)!  Turned out to be a little more difficult towards the end than I thought.  But now that my goal has been reached, it’s time for a new goal.  Fortunately I already have that goal and will be filling you all in very soon!  But for now, I’m gonna take a break!  I mean, it’s been forever since I didn’t write a blog post.  So, as of midnight tonight, I will be going into Maintenance Mode and brookjames.com will be under construction until next Monday.

Make sure you come back next week because I will be back with full steam ahead for something bigger AND you will not want to miss our next big thing!

But until then, as always, if you need me, I’m sure you can find me.  Thank you so much for all your thoughts and input and support for the past year!

Stayed tuned!  We are officially…

A while back I set a goal for myself.  As a relatively frequent blogger (4 or 5 times a week usually) there  were plenty of weeks that went by that I struggled with whether or not I wanted to keep spending time here or if it was just a phase.  So I thought I would put myself to the test to see if I had it in me or if I was just forcing it.  I set a goal to post every day for 30 days.

I reached that goal no problem.  But it was too easy.  I wasn’t really pushing myself.  Just setting my mind to it.  So I decided to set a real goal.  Instead of 30 days, the aim was for 365.  Well, that was 359 days ago.  The final countdown has started.  This is post is the first of the remaining 7.  51 weeks down.  One to go.  I’m pretty sure I can make it.  It has definitely been a struggle at times, but I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.  It is absolutely a marathon.

But now I have to decide what to do once I cross the finish line.  There are plenty of options and I think have some good ones, but I’m not sure which I want to go with yet.  So I need your help here.

Which option is your pick?

1. Set a new goal and keep blogging for another straight year.
2. Take a week + off and rest my weary fingers and keyboard.
3. Rush the launch of my newest project (not sure I can really get it done in time)
4. _________________________________ (fill in the blank)

If you come here often you know I love to talk about my wife.  I try not to do it all the time so I am not THAT pastor that is always talking about his smokin’ hott wife (yes, hott with 2 t’s).  Don’t get me wrong.  She absolutely is.  SMOKIN’ hott.  But I try to broaden my horizons and blog subjects.

As you may also know we just had a major change in our calm, couple, married, do-what-we-want-when-we-want lives.  5 months ago a perfect little present wrapped in slobber, spit up and giggles joined us.  Well, my wife has really embraced her new role and is loving it!  She is officially a stay at home mom.  She now has the most important job she will ever have.  Being in ministry with me, she knows that we go through hard times and experiences in live for more than the “just because” reasoning.  So she has relaunched her blog as a full time mommy blogger!

For you guys out there, (apparently) mommy blogging is a big deal.  When we didn’t know what to do with our newborn issues, I would google and she would search mommy blogs.  Her answers were always better than what I came up with.  But now that she has refocused her efforts and is poised to take the mommy world by storm, I wanted to let you all know before you get swept up in it!

Go check out the all new The Mom Diggity.

Tell your mom.
Tell your wife.
Tell your friend’s wife.
Tell your maternity patients.

Trust me.  It’s the bomb diggity.  (Yeah, I said it.)

So last week I started telling you about some changes that I have been planning on for a while.  For those of you that may have missed it, there has been some things that I have had on my heart for a long time.  I have been chewing on it for a long time but just always put it off as something to maybe do later.  Well, I finally decided that it was time to go for it and I am hoping that God will bless it and use it.

The other side of it was that the domain that I had decided on and was centering everything around was taken.  Someone in New York had taken one of the two best options and someone in Florida had the other.  Huge bummer!  Well, now for the update!  I have emailed back and forth with the guy in Florida and he has decided to let us have the domain!  That is huge!  I don’t have to come up with a whole new idea!

So now I wanna ask a favor from you all.  I know I haven’t told you much about what is to come, but I am really excited about it.  I know you don’t have details and I know that we don’t know this guy with the domain, but I wanna ask all of you to join in with me in praying for what is to come and that God will use it in ways that make my dreams for it look weak!  Also, pray that the guy in Florida would be blessed for being so gracious and willing!  Thank you all so much!  I can’t wait to unveil the thoughts and ideas for it all!

Plans are in the works for a major renovation here at brookjames.com.  I have been thinking and praying about this for a while now and I’m tired of just not doing it.  So over the next couple months (hopefully not longer than that) I will be working on a brand new look to this site.  I hope and pray that it will be something that God will use in all kinds of ways.  I don’t know what the finished product is yet, but I have some pretty good ideas of what I’m shooting for and I am very excited about it all!

So, here is where you come in.  I have come up with some plans and concepts, but the domain name that I want to get to add to it has been taken.  It was claimed back in 2008 and has not been used.  Unfortunately the owner has it until 2012.  Boo.  While there are other options, this one is my absolute favorite so far.  So if you would join in with me in praying that this lady in New York doesn’t ignore my emails, has a heart, no plans for it, and is willing to pass it on to me I would really appreciate it!  It won’t stop the plans from moving forward if she says no or ignores me, but it definitely will be a big bummer!

Thank you all for your support, prayers and love.  I seriously can’t thank you all enough!  Stay tuned for some awesome new stuff coming soon!

After a 13 hour work day and level 3 of the 30 Day Shred, my blogging mind is shot.  I literally couldn’t even get that sentence out to my wife without stumbling through it.  I feel like the little kid below trying to push the eyelids open!  So, the blog will be the expendability for now!

Don’t worry.  I’ll put AT LEAST this much work into tomorrow’s post.  So come back then!

I really meant to blog.

We have had a crazy busy week!  So much is going on and as I sit here trying to crank out my nightly blog post, my brain is no longer working.  We have VBS for the kids all week which has provided mornings starting before 5:30 for 4 days in a row with one more to go, KK and I started doing the 30 Day Shred by Jillian Michaels, and to top it all off Jessi Girl hasn’t wanted to sleep all week!  Fortunately this next week is going to provide a wonderful break!

So as I sit here staring at this poorly forming blog post while being frustrated with an annoying lady trying to find a condo in LA on HGTV, I decided I’m not going to blog.  Forcing myself to try to come up with something when nothing specific has been dropped on me today and none of my drafts are hitting the spot just didn’t seem like a good idea.  So, this is me not blogging.  Pray for sanity and sleep!

How’s your week?

I didn’t really know what to expect when I started this blog.  I really didn’t expect to get very far as it was quite a bit different than my normal habits.  But something inside me said to do it.  Now one year, 10 months and five days later I have hit a milestone I never would have guessed I’d get to.  It took me 674 days to reach 500 posts!

It’s crazy to look back through the posts.  Not that I am awesome now, but when I started I was not a good writer.  I’m glad that I can see there has been some growth there.  Some of you that have read from the start are probably also glad there has been some growth.  The posts over the last 22 months have varied quite widely and some of them that I didn’t expect much from have proven to draw more traffic than hundreds of others combined!  So just in case you are interested, here are a few of the top posts from the first 500.

• …Now You’ve Got The Shiveries???
• What’s The Deal With Worship Music?
• Star Wars (The Secret To Blowing Up Your Blog)
• The Insanity That Is Craigslist Spam
• I Think I’m An Ass
• She’s Here!
• Dear God, Please Strike Them With Lightning…
• Being The Daddy I Was Made To Be

So 500 posts and almost 72,000 hits later, here we are.  Thank you all for putting up with me.  Thank you joining in the discussions and sharing your thoughts.  I’m looking forward to the next 500 posts!  Hope you all don’t get too bored with me before then.