The DKers 2022 Christmas Letter

Greetings,

Check it out, our year end recap letter is actually posted before the end of the year. This year we did 27 shows and tried out more new stuff than we have in the last five years. Part of the productivity this year was due to my goal of doing one tangible DKers thing each week. I think was able to do it, but a large part of that was learning that if you have a tangible goal for a busy week it is fairly easy to cut that goal in half and make it two small goals that are still tangible things that you can point to. I still have a lot of DKers things I could do. It turns out doing a lot of things doesn't make your to-do list shorter, it makes it longer.  Still, trying to do something every week did have an effect. However, I think tangible goals may be overrated. Example, one of my weekly goals was to shellac my hat to make it stiffer. This was an easy goal and didn't take much time, but it is easy to imagine myself getting distracted and fiddling around with my hat for a half hour instead. My question is, when it comes to juggling, which is better? Would I rather see a juggler who fiddles around with his hat for a half hour or one who is good a getting stuff done? Anyway, while there are lots of things we want to do next year, I do not have a specific goal going into the year. 

We finished the Easter routine we started talking about a few years ago. Most of what we did with this involved getting rid of all the jokes, adding music, and making it shorter and shorter. We are still thinking about improving the ending of it. We also came up with a Piggie and Elephant routine for our libraries shows this summer. This was probably the best "one off" show we have ever come up with, and the excitement Darren had for this routine/idea was so great it made me question if he has actually liked any of my past ideas. It also highlighted that Darren is a little more of an actor than me, in that when we performed it, he was Piggie the whole time while I was still being me reading the role of Elephant while doing the show. This distinction may not make sense as I write it down, but it will be in my mind for whatever we come up with next. We also finally did our collaboration with Marian which can be seen here. I came up with four possible juggling ukulele songs. Three of them can be heard online, and one of which, "The Wise Juggler," we are actually doing in our shows. Also, with help from This Way Up's Jax, we now have a new logo. I also incorporated my contact juggling tricks from last years D vs K into our numbers routine. Finally I added poiggling to the Christmas show.

Even though we had a lot of shows, we didn't do a lot of new events. Most of our shows were places we had done previous years. We did do a big new Christmas event at Quarryville that I could see becoming an annual thing. We also did an Trunk or Treat at Pine Grove which was notable for the new format: six super short shows back to back with a 5 minute break inbetween shows. I liked this format, but I could barely stand by the last show. Also, yet again Darren has won D vs K. Instead of recapping, I will just share the link.

Finally, we need to end this thing with our personal sentences. Even though Darren failed to give me a personal sentence, I know Darren has been busy teaching Sunday School, taking Cameron to Soccer Shots, and going to the chiropractor. I know this because he frequently sets reminder alarms for these things on the DKers account, so my phone reminds me to do them. Kevin has unpacked most of his boxes after moving late last year.