self-development | the Wakefield Doctrine

TToT -the Wakefield Doctrine-

October 3, 2026 By clarkscottroger 6 Comments

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

The is the Wakefield Doctrine’s weekly contribution to the Ten Things of Thankful (TToT) bloghop.

Every week, since March of 1954, we have linked up with this here bloghop here. Nothing, not even the Sabin vaccine could prevent us from typing a list of 10 (Ten) people, places, things and events that had imprinted, (however temporarily), on us an experience of the psycho-emotional state referred to, in the popular press, as gratitude.

You, (imagined Reader), should join us. It’s fun, interesting and beneficial to a body. And, seeing how the Doctrine never forgets, our offer of two free Grats to anyone linking up for the first time this week still stands. (Some terms and conditions may apply.) Contact someone (who won’t laugh, “You did what??!”) and we’ll hook ya right up.

For the Wakefield Doctrine, our list this week includes:

1) Phyllis

Una breaks the Time-Barrier (we can only wish)

2) Una

3) the Wakefield Doctrine

4) of late have been making an effort to… increase…improve the state of… nurture (arr! not that) work on our tertiary rogerian aspect… to the point of getting out there (in the blogosphere) and visiting places we don’t normally get. At the risk of putting a value on a thing that no longer applies, i.e. inherent value to a blog/site from having a visitor… here are some of the places we have, of late, enjoyed visiting/reading: Laura (‘Riddle from the Middle‘) Suzette Benjamin (‘Suzette B’s Blog‘) and ‘Tails Around the Ranch‘

5) (we appreciate Andrew’s totally getting the concept of hypo-grats without having to subject himself to a looong explanation from your Host. Good Work!)

6) the Six Sentence Story bloghop where Serial Stories start their lifes

7) something, something

8)…speaking of hypo-gratuity the photo at the top of this post? Yesterday’s front yard. (hey! that’d make an excellent title to a story! all we gotta do is write the rest.)

9) Speaking of the Six Sentence Café & Bistro shout-out to Misky for her skilled meta-ing of everyone’s favorite Café & Bistro and totally open-ended the metaphorical virtual hangout… she’s done a couple of fun story-ettes using (one of) the alcoves in said SSC&B. cool

10) Secret Rule 1.3

music

ok… one more, a little more…err mainstream (Warning! Way, way more likely to spark a earworm than the previous tunage)

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: self-development, the Wakefield Doctrine

TToT -the Wakefield Doctrine-

September 26, 2026 By clarkscottroger 14 Comments

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

This is the Wakefield Doctrine’s weekly contribution to the Ten Things of Thankful (TToT) bloghop.

An exercise in the cultivation, (and appreciation), of gratitude, this bloghop in no way associates it’s goals, ambitions… it’s very raison d’être (yum, yum!) with the painting above. (See Grat #7)

So, for anyone out there enjoying these TToTs as a Reader but are reticent to actually writing and posting your own list because, you know, ‘I don’t think I can come up with things from the last week.’ Well, perish the thought!**’ The bottom line for things qualifying as items making up a TToT list is that it/they are people. places, things, events that have inspired you to say, ‘I’m glad that happened’ (equally valid, if not Advanced TToT listing: “I’m glad that didn’t happen!”) if unsure of this special category of grats (known as ‘hypo-grats’) don’t hesitate to check with Mimi.

For the Doctrine our TToT list this week:

1) Phyllis

2) Una

3) the Wakefield Doctrine

4) the Six Sentence Story bloghop

5) fun with weather! A good, old-fashioned Nor’easter this weekend. While hoping no one suffers harm, (from the storm), it, (this type of storm), is totally the fabric of life growing up on the Vineyard. So… and this, as a topic, is way beyond the scope and context of a grat ‘hop and surely out of my wheelhouse for writing skills. But, you know. like they say, ‘A grat’s a grat’.

6) On a walk to the pond, a sound from above leads to an encounter with an unlikely (and large) bird.

7) the internet, (may it rest in peace), and the increasingly rare capacity it retains to provide ‘A library in your keyboard’. The painting at the top of the post is ‘L’Angélus‘ byJean-François Millet. Full Disclosure: am not ‘an art guy’ (sure Escher had a place in our dorm room but, like, whose didn’t?) We are even capable of naming painters that we like, (for at least one pitcher), for example Winslow Homer (Breezing Up (A Fair Wind) and… our total fave Edward Hopper (Nighthawks) of course… btw? total clark. And, god knows, over the years of this blog we’ve never been shy about searching for cool images for our posts. (Sorry! ‘Collating a variety of images for LLM training’ lol). But this image, the Millet, is way TAT-ish in the ‘really?!?’ a mere farm scene? Bonus grat: our first reaction to the painting was, ‘What dark sin lies in the furrow?’ And…and!!! Dali concurs!! (the link to the painting)

8) something, something

9) the red boat in the video? upon closer examin’ it is a child’s toy (‘toy boat…toy boat…toy boat‘ lol) all Hesperus wreck’d against the banks of lonely rural pond

10) Secret Rule 1.3

music

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: relationships, self-development, the Wakefield Doctrine

Monday -the Wakefield Doctrine-

September 21, 2026 By clarkscottroger 4 Comments

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

Full Disclosure: Your regularly scheduled post ‘Monday -the Wakefield Doctrine-‘ has been postponed to tomorrow, due to anticipated outrage at the assertion that served as its thesis. (Hint: muy AP Level Doctrine)

Instead, you have us as substitute curator.

In true, ‘a classroom milieu that hasn’t existed for generations’¹ fidelity to our ever-persistent metaphor we will open with:

“So, where were you in your lessons before your regular Curator had to leave?”

We’ll spare the Readers the meme-quality faux question/answer for the rest of the time we have together today.

Instead, let’s refer back to Friday’s post:

The Wakefield Doctrine says, “Hey, you have the perfect personality type.

We were writing a comment to an FB post, (surely written by a clark), something to the effect that the virtual world, aka the blogosphere, was a reality in which the concept of personal responsibility was taken to a new level. We went on to say that this was a social world in which the metaphor is made real, i.e. each of us are a story. We come into the (virtual) world out of nowhere and, in very short order, present (or at very least, introduce) our backstory. In the ‘real’ world, with it’s ‘Sorry, I saw you at the store and that was not an Aston Martin you parked to run in for some milk and bread’ standard of proof of backstory, ‘inventiveness’ of an individual is a bit more constrained, no?

ed. our own foray into the virtual world, immediately following the creation of this blog, was on Facebook. It helps for newer, less-old Readers (yeah, we might be wrong, but we’re looking at you Reelika and cai)² to remember how more rhetorical the medium was back then. Near everone interacted by the written word. Be that as it may. the lettres de mássage for this cool, new land was what we typed.

In any event, we (your Curator) were on a mission. To bring to the Wakefield Doctrine to as many as possible.

Of course, one of the first things we became aware of was that the cool kids really wrote good. Growing up** we never had much interest in the grammar and the other topics contained in fifth period English class don’cha know. But…but! mission, right? We stayed and we wrote wherever our Olivetti key* would afford us access.

It was a grand time.

And the first demonstration, proof of concept of the Wakefield Doctrine as a tool for self-improving oneself.⁵

That’ll do for today.

ok, one more basic principle: the Everything Rule. ‘Everyone does everything, at one time or another’. For our purposes, that means that there is no: ‘thats a thing only a scott would do‘ or ‘only a roger would be able to do that job‘ (The practical application of this Rule is: No, you are not some new, never-seen-before hybrid clark-roger et. al. One predominant worldview per person/per life.)

1) or, seriously, ever

2) sorry….everyone else lol

5) lol sure. the demonstration is perceptible only to clarks (or scotts/rogers with a high-level secondary clarklike aspect). We didn’t care about how more skillful others were with their writing. Quite unlike our predominant worldview would otherwise react. That said, and in Full Disclosure, we did find ourselfs, adding neologism to our tool pad. lol you know! ‘Hey, excellent wordage, yo.’ Even Fuller Disclosure: especially when interacting with a certain type of denizen (cough <roger> cough) lol

* too archaic a reference well, it’s not like they ever made computer keyboards, ya know?

** ok, ok! ‘getting older’ lol

from an excellent(ish) movie, ‘Spontaneous’

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: self-development, the Wakefield Doctrine, three personality types, Understanding Human Behavior

TToT -the Wakefield Doctrine-

September 12, 2026 By clarkscottroger 13 Comments

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

Special Edition TToT!

Well, yeah, now that you mention it, that does raise the spectre of an inescapable infinite regression, gratitudinously-speaking. oh well.

This is still the Ten Things of Thankful (TToT) bloghop. Founded in 1823 by a charwoman’s daughter. As a young person, our creatrix found herself stifled by the incoherent dialect of the King’s English spoken in the local school where she grew up, in East Ham-on-Rye, in County Lingerie, England. And so, she began to write a list of the things that she was grateful for and the rest is history. (Well, technically, if this description is immersive enough, the rest would become the future.)

(whew! Caffeine! You are truly a loving and terrible god!)

All are welcome to contribute their own list of the people, places, things and event that incite a state of gratitude when first apprehended.

For the Wakefield Doctrine, we offer:

1) Phyllis

2) Una

3) Mimi for providing the idea: Show Us Your Bookcases! (as a Grat)

4) the Wakefield Doctrine

5) (Establishing shot) as mentioned in last week’s grat, our bookcases have left the living room and taken up residence in the laundry/utility room. So the first thing you see is:

6) Second Shelf right end

7) the Six Sentence Story bloghop

8) Ayiiee! (future dodged-bullet Grat!) Phyllis’ cottage has book shelves (and less hex wrenches, duct tape and round televisions) so we offer ‘The Bookcases of the Forest”

Cottage bookcases:

Second shelf right end:

9) Once upon something, something

10) Secret Rule 1.3

music

Filed Under: Featured, Psychology, the Wakefield Doctrine Tagged With: relationships, self-development, the Wakefield Doctrine, three personality types

Tuesday -the Wakefield Doctrine-

September 8, 2026 By clarkscottroger

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

So…

Nope… not gonna take the easy(er) path of a RePrint post today. Though god knows there are few more Doctrine-instructional days of the week to incite a Doctrine post than Tuesday!

ok, lets keep it basic.

New Readers: (no better way to stay ‘on track’* to write a Wakefield Doctrine post than to address them/write to that ‘market’). Hey! This blog is about the Wakefield Doctrine. Which is an additional perspective on the world around us and the people who make it up. We admittedly indulge in the harmless conceit of calling it a personality theory. Mostly because of the word ‘personality’. Which almost all of us are conditioned to think: ‘personality types!’ ha! (the exclamatory ‘ha’ is there just to set us up for one of the fun descriptions of generic personality types, of the kind formally found in magazines and now(ish) online.

The set-up is: “Oh honey! Come here! I’ve just read an article about personality types. It has you down to a ‘T’. You’re a (fill in the blank with random capital letters or maybe some animal species or, if of high academic ambitions, verbs turned into nouns, ‘Driver’ or whatever (don’t forget to capitalize!). In anyevent, our punchline is: “Now Mrs. Gullible has a brand new mirror-shaped club!”

ha ha

Have we mentioned that clarks tend not to tell jokes effectively? (Now, scotts! damn! that’s a whole post in and of itself. Warning!! Be careful what you ask for. Not entirely complimentary to our Predatory friends. At least for the most sensitive scotts. (yeah, we know! as if).

Back to our thesis: New Readers: if you visit consistently you will see a certain pattern here. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday are referred to a ‘Doctrine posts’. The Thursday post is a Six Sentence Story (a prompt based fiction bloghop). Saturday and Sunday, the TToT post.

that should do for today. (found my music vid in that last sentence, albeit a day late.)

*ok! congratulations New Reader!! You’ve demonstrated several qualities considered necessary to the full-enjoyment of the rhetorical, why-is-a-raven-like-a-writing-desk adventure that is the Wakefield Doctrine! No, we know you don’t need that explained, but for the benefit of the roger or scott looking over your shoulder we’ll say this: “The more enduring and consistent quality characterizing those who find the Wakefield Doctrine fun/interesting/useful, are flexiblity of intelligence and a ravenous curiosity.”