Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
Time again for our collective examination of the nature of gratitude, through the lists (Ten) of people, places and things (Things) that cause, elicit or otherwise result in one (presumably the writer) experiencing (a) feeling of gratitude (Thankful).
Personally it’s a challenge to identify 10 Things of Thankful. Not because there’s a lack of things (to feel grateful for), not because I don’t have a sense of appreciation for beneficial people, good things and positive places, it’s just that as a clark, I have a certain, ‘belief that I’m emotionally tone-deaf for my own feelings.’ (best example available this morning of the emotional ‘disconnect’ of some clarks: you ever have a situation where you’re totally indisposed but you get a call that someone else answers and they, like, yell, “hey clark! tell phone call” and you’re like, “er…I can’t come to the phone right now. tell them to call back” and you hear them say something in the phone and then they’re all, “they say they can’t, it’s important!” and you’re “what do they want?” and then you hear them say, “he says, ‘what do you want?” and then like….)
…that’s kinda of what some clarks experience when delving into the more rarefied strata of emotions and such.
(Students of the Doctrine should at this point be responding with a ‘yeah, frickin clarks they gots to make they own lives more difficult than necessary’ and ‘damn! did he just infer what I think he inferred?’)
I was fortunate to have met our Miss Lewis a number of years ago and was subsequently invited to participate in this, the Ten Things of Thankful. (As good a transition to this week’s list as anyone could ask for, no?)
1) Meeting Lizzi back in 2013. If memory serves me, it was through my participation in the Finish the Sentence Friday bloghop
2) I’m grateful for pulling myself out of the past just a moment ago…( I went searching for the first time I met Lizzi, went back to the Finish the Sentence ‘hops, but the way it was done, there were no post thumbnail on my Post (on any given Friday)… and I tried sneaking into L’s past, but a link to her in 2013 is a dead end, as she used Blogger back then. oh well
3) I always include work (on my TToT lists). It is challenging, satisfying and rewarding, but mostly it’s the kind of work that allows me to experiment on myself. As in ‘the Big Experiment’ coming May 12th (and 6 weeks after) wherein I will be participating in a HomeBuyer’s Workshop. Anyone out there that’ve had a bad experience buying a house, as in, “If only I knew that then” variety and care to share… please, enlighten me! Our goal (our being myself and an agent who I’ve worked with on projects in the past, quite successfully, I might add, and, and she’s a scott*) is to address the things about house buying that stresses out, and worries people, but of a nature that, for one reason or another, they tend not to come out and ask about it, before embarking on the adventure. Like that… except I’ve totally got to ditch my ‘professor clark’ vibe, that tweed-covered albatross that I’ve dragged around since kindergarten. lol
4) Phyllis among other things (too numeral**) and too personal to specify here, unless a direct question is asked, she is one of my primary sources of feed back on my writing adventure!
5) Una guru, sensei and co-pilot every Friday afternoon
6) The Graviteers: Christine and Val, Joy and Sarah, Kristi and Lisa go! Graviteers!
7)Co-hostinae at this here bloghop here. hey, you the best!
8) The Secret Book of Rules (aka the Book of Secret Rules) which, according to SR 32.2 sub[chapter 6[8.1] clearly states: “...when a participant in the TToT runs into a situation, condition, problem or ‘hey!!-come-here-you-need-to-see-this-I-know-you’re-trying-to-write-but-this-important!!’ demand from the environment, (ex)ceptions to the General Rules will be entertained, provided that the writer makes (at least) one Reader smile and think, ‘Good one’ and cause zoe, (with or without a raised eyebrow) to say to skip (aka Doug), “yeah, I think I can present this, D! yo get the SGVs on the line… (make sure that new V is there when I present, he’s an interesting one)”
9) My current writing jones, ‘Almira‘. I will, as I often do in these pages, express outrage at my tendencies to get myself into spots, as t cause me to say, (quite sincerely), “What was I thinking! Another Serial story?!! But I did. And I’m grateful for the (serial) format because, even though I get all tied up and stressed out in the middle of the week when I realize that I do not have a clue where the story goes next, by the end of the week(ish), there’s another Chapter!
This coming week, in Chapter 5: a number of the major characters wake up on the Saturday morning of the week in which the story started. Not only Dorothy and Hunk (no! quite separately, hell, not even in the same building), but also Tom Hardesty and Dorothy’s college roommate, Eliza, (who wakes up very not alone, (now) back home at her father’s Estate on the Main Line, for the Summer) and Becky Stillworth, who wakes up quite alone, she is, after all, still only 16 years old and despite any socio-sexual precociousness, she has definite plans for her life that leaves little room for prairie games of the sort that the local 16 year old boys would be more than willing to initiate. And, Claire Griswold. I love that she doesn’t just love her work, and how it’s not just that she cares for the patients in her charge, but that, with all the natural talent and power she possesses, she is not driven. She lives and works and is remarkably effective in both, without the stress of ambition. We’ll know our new friends much better after this Chapter.
10) SR 1.3
Hey!! Anyone think the idea of beta Reading Blogdominion would be fun, let me know! (Not a hundred percent sure how the whole beta reader thing works, but I have Blogdominion all complied into a single doc of 275 pages)
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Nice list – as always. :) But the telephone part? Oh yes. I have not one but TWO cell phones – one for me and one for work – and I can’t stand either of them. Sometimes I wonder why I even have the damned things. LOL. Oh wait, for communiCATION. But what if I don’t want to communicate? I silence it. Or use it as a calculator. Or as a GPS device. Or for podcasts. Dang it…why do they have to be phones, too? Haha.
OOoOOoooh! I forgot to say, FRIST!
Frist it is!
totally availed myself of the rule book this am…. didnt even get to read your post yet just saw the virginal reference and knew it had to be to me! hahahhaahahhaaa…. ahem…yeah…
hrrummp
Or harumph as it were
Well, I now just spent a good amount of time looking back to see when Lizzi first popped up on my blog comments. Looks like November 2012! If memory serves, you and she met up soon after. (Yes, we all know the story!) :D
Glad to see Phyllis got her own item number, and it was before Una’s! ;)
Oh, and I forgot about the buying the house thing. I didn’t really have to do anything past finding the house I wanted. Bryan does closings for a living, so I was completely and happily oblivious.
it should be interesting on a number of levels… (and yes, I did have the good sense to manage to have a scott as co-workshop leader) lol
yeah… I’m not so good on the dates and as I mentioned, going back to the Doctrine FTSF didn’t help without the links to other’s posts, though I did locate those early Comments on the Doctrine (both from you and Lizzi) just can’t seem to find them, I have a certain limit to my rummage attention span.
I’m glad you and Lizzi met each other back then.
:)
I had a bad week and fell behind on your latest chapter, but I appreciate you sending a reminder. I do prefer reading on WordPress, as that is where I am most familiar. I’ll go do that now.
hey glad you mentioned that (I’ll be happy to send the Chapters as their wordpress versions (as opposed to the jukepop), I take it the computer reads the Chapters. How does the digital reader do with some of the sentences? As part of the edit process, whenever possible I ask Denise to read the Chapter outloud… some sentences (those on the long side) work sometimes only if the correct rhythm is imposed (not always the normal rhythm… next time we do a vid chat remind me to ask you to play a chapter on your computer (if that’s possible)
That’s the funny thing with writing. It’s definitely about rhythm and it seems the spoken word is kinder to long sentences.
The challenge appears to be how to communicate/translate the conversations that are in your head to the page. lol
yeah…though it seems to help at times to just make, simple declarative statements
ya know?
I have no clue about beta reading things, but I do like the image of your tweed colored albatross. Born to teach – or look the part. I thank you for providing me with the opportunity to enjoy reading Almira.
From what I read, a beta read is like an informal focus group… nothing as stringent as a line-by-line edit, just a read this and tell us your reactions, plus and minus
So, I can’t get past #3 because we just helped our daughter buy a condo. The topic I would like to see covered more is 15 yr mortgage vs 30 yr. I think more people would find they could swing the 15 yr and save themselves a bundle if they tighten their belts a bit. But it feels like the presumption is that everyone will choose a 30 yr.
Dull comment , but there you go!
no, thank you for the comment. doing this workshop is causing me to re-visit my approach to Buyers… over the years we all develop a certain approach to working with buyers but, hearing about the concerns that a buyer has (especially the first time buyer) is very helpful. the goal is to address the things that people might worry about (at the prospect of house hunting) but feel uncomfortable asking directly.
The housing market has exploded in our area. We’ve had realtors ask us if we want to sell our home. The houses are going for over 100 grand more than what we paid for our house when we bought it. I don’t know why. The home down the street that is EXACTLY like ours went for 200 more in a bidding war. My husband said “We are selling our house” — but then we would have to find a house and I am not mentally prepared to look for one. Nope. No way. I am sweating just thinking of it. Once we looked at a house and they had dirty dishes on their stove. Like burnt food in the frying pan. And I’m talking OLD food. Shudder…and the driveway was painted in bright blue.
lol… it is amazing about some Sellers. (all, by and by validation and reinforcement of one of the central tenets of the Doctrine, i.e. reality is, to a small but very real extent, personal. how else to explain the behavior that you’ve witnessed! Blue driveway, huh? Not sure that I’d stop the car if I have people out looking at houses and came to one with a bright blue driveway lol
(yeah the drawback to getting much more for your house is paying much more for the next one (if you would look in the same ‘market’ as the experiencing rapid appreciation).
My suggestion for #3 would be to talk about contingencies, specifically appraisal and inspection. I think it is easier, especially for first-time buyers, to submit an offer when they realize that they have a legal “out” if things aren’t as they seem.
I would be happy to beta read Blogdominion.
thank you (on both items)
that’s the main goal of the workshop to address the stress producing concerns and questions inevitable to the process, knowing how the sequence of events before getting involved makes all the difference in the world, imo
cool! will get a copy printed (need to do one more review)
Housing markets and mortgages that turn out to be not what they were presented as are NOT my best topic right now. In short, we bought at precisely the wrong moment right before it all fell apart and are only just recently in a position nearly ten years later where things are working better thanks to some refi programs that worked distinctly to our benefit. Sore subject. Sorry.
Go you with the serial writing – hooray!
And hooray for graviteering and weight loss that may have produced a new, lower “stable weight” that sticks. (Still with fingers crossed, of course.)
there was so much in the way of deceptive practices, back in the day, that, unfortunately, a situation as you describe in not at all un-common.
(As I say in my reply to Kristi, knowing the start, each step and the finish, not only will help reduce the stress, it will allow time for questions and decisions, well before finding themselves in the middle of the buying process (not the best time to learn)