‘Hey, you got a minute?’

(Now is it all cultures that imbue this totally innocuous phrase with such bad ju ju?
Or is it only this culture?  Not really sure.)

You know by now that the Wakefield Doctrine is a unique and fun and productive way to understand why people act the way that they do, right? And, you know that the Wakefield Doctrine (aka the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)  offers you  tools with which you can change how you interact with the world, so much so, that the very course of your life can be altered?

Well, it does, and you can.

Just wanted to get that out there.  Sometimes it seems that we are writing the same thing over and over.  Pressure to come up with Posts that are funny or amusing, provocative or at very least, holding your attention through one more Post; all this in the never-ending effort to build the Readership of the blog.  To this end we have come up with a fairly odd array of themes and characters, (literary devices) and Polls and quizzes.  And vidoes, my god, if it were not for youtube.

I think that we have reached the halfway point of the beginning phase of this blog.  The actual Doctrine is understood by our Readers, and a style of presenting the information that supports the WD,  has evolved to a point where we are reasonably comfortable (sort of) writing these Posts.

So, why the weird vibe?

Well, to begin with, this is the 108th or 107th Post of this blog.
In the course of writing these things, we have tried to not only illustrate and demonstrate the principles that comprise the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers, but to do so in ways that Readers will find interesting, amusing and most importantly engaging.  I have the advantage in that I speak to most of the people involved in (this) process of writing Posts.  I speak of the group refered to as Progenitors and Downsprings, an odd collection of friends, relatives and others who have been drawn to this thing of ours.  Some are active in the blog on a daily basis and others are included on the basis of name only, but there is a group, as it seemed (in the beginning) to be necessary for this to be a totally collaborative effort.  Finally, there are the Readers, between 25 and 30 people in the world who come to the Doctrine on a regular basis.  I mention this because I am constantly looking for this blog to ‘take off’.  Sometimes I think, if only I could get the people I talk to, to ‘talk’ to everyone else, through Comments or Replies or even writing Posts,  then there would be the energy that I know is there but often think is not coming across to our Readers.

When I say that I talk to everyone, I mean everyone.  Real people, friends, work associates and people that I would otherwise have never have met, were it not for this blog, people like Mel and Jason, Pixie and Kino. (These are people I have met online, they are writers of blogs and citizens of virtual worlds.)
And the only reason I am talking to them and getting to know them as people, is the Wakefield Doctrine.

Given that the most frequent ‘voice’ you hear on these pages is that of a clark, can there be any doubt that the Doctrine is ‘a useful and productive (and fun) way to understand those around us’?
(And did I say changing our lives?  I did, didn’t I?  Can I get a big amen).

At times when I question what we are (trying to) do with this blog and whether or not it is coming across, the answer I am left with still comes out the same: the Doctrine has legs.
A major part of the process of writing a blog, (at least for me),  is trying to keep the ‘pride thing’ at bay.  I read the site visit stats  and everytime I see ‘good numbers’, I get all humble, like “yes we must continue to serve humanity and carry the message of the Doctrine to people in all the lands”.
And then there are the days when there are a grand total of three vists by noon and I am all ‘wtf? why do they forsake me, maybe I am overdoing the Janie thing, maybe they all are getting bored and what will I do with my life now’.
(Am being totally serious here, I mean last week or whenever the change over to the self-hosting occurred, there was a lag of a few days when the Wakefield Doctrinewas effectively offline.  I still can’t believe how bad I felt, lol.  As the oddly quaint expression has it, ‘I was beside myself’.  Damn it was un-comfortable.)
But then I will force myself to ignore all that and write a Post, even when, especially when, I totally do not feel like it.  And then I remember why I do this thing. 

And the preceding, little parenthetically top-heavy paragraph is the ‘proof’ of the Wakefield Doctrine.  If the Doctrine can permit/allow/encourge/enable me to do this thing, then it can do anything  to improve your own damn lives.

So, come on down folks!  This way to the Wakefield Doctrine carnival of understanding.  ‘Doesn’t matter who you are as long as you are here.’

Soon to appear in a computer near you: an Interview with a rogerian Reader (MJM), the second installment of Downspring#1’s Case Study, another Advice Column from Ms AKH and, of course, more from everyone’s favorite, Janie Sullivan and her friends at ‘ol MillFill High.  We will now conclude this Post in the (approximately) usual fashion, with videos. (I really can’t explain vid #1, I have never been a fan of the Dead but the goddamn thing has been in my head since I started writing this Post.  Worse than usual, I had only a fragment of a lyric, ‘this long…something’.  So I had to go through a ton of clips, did I mention that I am not such a big fan? “The Pain, OH the Pain” (Dr. J Smith LIS).  Oh! and hats (for your damn head) there will be so many contests.

…and then there is George…