Surrealist

What do we think about the endless futility of trying to be happy? As in, I will drift into hell if I neglect meditation, I will drift into hell if I don't banish spaghetti from my life, I will drift into hell if I don't aim some mantra at my root chakra, and most of all, I will drift into hell if I fail to surrender? Much of the wisdom seems to point to this thing of dropping the struggle paradigm, but I find myself struggling to drop the struggle. As I try to really, truly let go, I find that I am getting closer and closer to running out of money, to having no friends, no lovers, no purpose, no basic needs met, no clarity, and stuck between this clashing duality that says on the one hand, "oh my god dude. Human needs do exist. You do need a job you don't hate to be happy. You do need to be around positive people. You're going to have to leave town, because Los Angeles is the capital of western misery. There is no way to be happy here. And you're going to have to quadruple down on meditation. Take your power back, don't be passive, take control as best you can, create the life you want." And on the other, "oh look dude. You are absolutely spending your life running away from scarcity, and there's no doubt whatsoever about what you want: to surrender to God. To be completely, profoundly passive, to fully die, to completely abandon happiness. But, unfortunately, you seem blocked from this experience." Even as I write this, it flies in the face of giving up on self help, counselling, advice, needing to get life right. I'm feeling quite convinced these days that anybody trying to heal depression is reinforcing it, that as long as you are trying to fix yourself, you cannot possibly get there.

@K VIL Fear of gluten

I did 7mg of 5meodmt 6 months ago, had a really bad trip, and started experiencing tensions headaches and panic attacks for the first time. At this point, I am still experiencing very powerful tension headaches, which feel like my temples clenching very hard. I can move this tension around my head, into my jaw, and weirdly into my teeth, where it starts to really hurt. Anybody else experience anything like this? It's very weird

Hey, I'm somebody who works in Hollywood media (even though I always disdained it) and pursued music composition and videoart privately for 10 years, feeling very unsuccessful in my personal projects despite having a couple shows, and very ashamed of my professional impact throughout. I have been trying to recover from ongoing depression and anxiety for a very, very long time. The study and practice of personal development has been promising, but I can see the war between the following two paradigms is making my head spin in a lot of indecisiveness about how to make moves. I experience a lot of indecision and doubt when thinking about what I really want and how to get it, and then when I make moves, I very often regret them, and just basically live on a rollercoaster of psychic pain that I would quite like to jump off. I'm hoping someone has some insights into how to reconcile this, what is kind of THE big question in philosophy anyway: PARADIGM 1 (THE PARADIGM OF BEING A CHIMPY HUMAN) Human beings like and dislike certain things, and have social needs. Misery is the result of spending your time doing things that you do not authentically enjoy, and not having your biological and/or relational needs as a human met. Working in the media makes me feel ungrounded, cheap, anxious, lonely, depressed, and ashamed of the addiction, self hate, and lies I am contributing to. and Working on my own media ALSO makes me feel ungrounded, lonely, anxious, depressed, and also incompetent and Going out to art/media based events makes me feel ungrounded, anxious, lonely, and depressed, because the content does nothing for me, I am reminded of my disappointment in my own work efforts, and my interactions there relentlessly reinforce that I do not belong, do not appreciate, and am not appreciated and I have no real friendships, real romance, or way to successfully vibe with women, because my vibe is bad, because I hate my work, which also makes me feel worse in itself and The benefits of self help and spiritual practice elude me because the rest is creating too much anxiety THEREFORE I need to figure out what PURPOSE feels good and juicy to me and I need to figure out A WAY TO SPEND MY EFFORT / WORK that feels satisfying and joyous to do AND/OR I need to find fun / enjoyment, and the meeting of my relational needs somehow, regardless of my work, and then I’ll feel better about the work I already do, or have more clarity about what work I enjoy PARADIGM 2 (THE PARADIGM OF BEING A TRANSCENDENT GHOST) The pursuit of happiness in work, relationships, hobbies, drugs, entertainment, and other outer things is actually the source of suffering. You suffer precisely because you bought the lie that you need conditions to be met to feel good. The real and only cure for excessive suffering is to surrender your conquest, and float back to your default position of bliss, which is your deepest nature, and is spiritual, sentient, and eternal. Surrender is the only path to substantial peace, love, and inspired action in life. My career is actually a goldmine of creative and impactful possibilities. I am squandering a goldmine and a decade of developing skills because I don’t have access to inner love. and I am surrounded by potentially deep friendships, and it’s me that chooses not to develop them out of depression and detachment to inner light and Dating is not working out for me because women can immediately tell that I do not feel good, which is again because I don’t know how to spiritually fill myself up, not because my work life is a big gigantic failure on my part to succeed in the past, or find the “right” work for me now. and Of course spiritual practice is going to lead me there, dummy, just do it more and take it very seriously So, these two paradigms pointing in exactly opposite directions, I don’t actually believe either of them. Paradigm 2 is convincing because even when I’m totally alone in the woods, even when I have no work I have to do, even when i am surrounded by people, i still feel like shit. And so while I’m trying to take action to feel better and make a life I like, I’m simultaneously believing that absolutely nothing will do it. I want to add also that I've spent most of the last year saying no to jobs to work on myself and finding inner light, but I'm finding that my inner peace and my flow in my outer life has really gotten worse rather than better.

@Mario These "shoulds" are confusing and I struggle with them too, in fact it's probably the primary source of stress in my life that I think there's some way out of depression and trauma, and I'm FAILING to do it, there's something I should do that will fix it, getting it wrong means horrendous emotions, etc. For what it's worth, I'd say watch your painful thoughts come up, and take the angle of "i hear you, I love you". The parts of yourself that are screaming to be loved will be endlessly searching for a way to get it. The wisdom on this topic is in... give yourself that love. The protesting mind that says "help!!! figure it out!!!", will be calm when you listen to its message and give it love. That clarity can then help inform good decisions. Don't make an enemy out of your mind and emotions, they want to help you. Our conditioning is difficult to overcome, but radical acceptance is a strong thing.

I've had issues with anxiety and depression starting as early as 13, and i'm now 29. I have pursued a pretty risky path in my life in spite of my emotional turmoil, following dreams that started in early childhood when I identified as a wizard, as someone who wanted to wield magical forces, which turned into a life path of pursuing art, film, and music. Feelings of being a failure started early, when I got rejected from the colleges where I would actually get to make stuff, and went instead to a massive school primarily concerned with writing theoretical analyses, which I had no interest in at all. I got a warning letter as well from a film teacher in high school who told me not to use art or film as a way to deal with my darkness, because it wouldn't work. I'm going through a really agonizing crisis of self worth these days, spending basically all of my free time battling really acute fear and despair, doing self help, yoga, gathering and practicing as much as I can about eating and living for mental health, but the anxiety has peaked so high at this point that I have been giving all that up. I am sick of my life being a terrified hurricane of trying to fix myself because it's exhausting and not working. It seems like all this fear that started back then really has had terrible consequences in my life and has lead to a lot of real failure. Anxiety permeates almost all of my memories. My first girlfriend, my first (attempted and failed) sexual experiences, my decade of writing music and finishing almost nothing, my so-called friends who I have no trust for at all, my college career which I was packed up and ready to leave multiple times, my jobs which I have always wanted to quit... they are all absolutely soaked in anxiety, terror of failure, and then a lot of failure, and then a lot more terror. Against my better judgement, I find it impossible not to feel a victim of it, like it hates me, like it's punishing me, and like it really has wrecked my life so far. I have never had a period of feeling generally happy and OK. It is clear to me that underlying it has been this very wounded sense of self, and that all the actions I have taken in my life have been somehow aimed at repairing it. But after so many years, being almost 30 now, and having gone through a ton of experimentation, study, and hard work on myself, i am so pissed off that it seems like I can just not catch a break from the sickening background fear that I'm kind of digging my heels in and saying fuck it all. I tried to write music for 10 whole years and felt like an incompetent failure the whole time (and really do have nothing to show for it), I wanted desperately to be in love and have a sex life but nobody wants to date a weak miserable scared man so I never had a girlfriend past high school, I did vipassana and came out of it feeling devastated and insane, I did 5meoDMT and came out positive that I'm going to hell and also maybe a little psychotic, I read a zillion self help books and watched all of Leo's videos and almost all of RSD, but I just seem unable to drop this damn emergency feeling unless I blast myself with alcohol, weed, coffee, and cigarettes. Then I can feel a bit comfortable in my skin. But without cheating, I am left in an ocean of anxiety that not even meditation and mysticism is helping me crack, and it all comes back to this weak ego that doesn't think it's safe to let go. So, since I'm clearly not at the level where high spiritual pursuits make sense, what can I do to honor the lower, more basic, more adolescent needs that I'm clearly still stuck on? How can I give this fucker an identity besides "miserable failure"? I have been in so much pain throughout the whole time I have been pursuing what I "love" that I now no longer believe I really genuinely love anything, besides blowjobs and coffee. I have quit my jobs, I have quit my art, I have quit dating, and I just stand face to face with my fear all day. Psychedelics and meditation make it worse. I need to get this inner teenager to grow up and I'm frustrated as all hell by my continued failure to do so.

I can relate. I got SUPER into all the actualized stuff, consumed it obsessively, then went on to consume more. I think something worth investigating is this idea of "spiritual bypassing", which is where you try to use spirituality to leap from a very low state to some of the highest states of consciousness possible. Understandably, you often get thrown on your ass. There may be work to do lower, down here on the ground, in your childhood or teenage self. You may need to throw your inner child or inner teen a bone, get the needs that are crying painfully to you from the shadow actually met or resolved, in order to build the strength needed to let go of yourself.

@Sevi Fantastic reply, thanks very much.

"The opposite of depression isn't happiness, it's vitality" - some Ted Talk. I think it's right. Depression is a numbing, a deadening, a grey-ing of life. My mom described literally seeing the world as grey. There's a sense of heaviness, of sinking, of letting out an continuous sigh of disappointment in all your movements. I would say it's sort of like being in the middle of a hellish warzone but with slow motion Billie Holiday music playing in the background.

At 29 I find myself something like 15+ years deep into my war with major depression, anxiety, and subsequent dysfunctional patterns like addictions, inability to have relationships, obsessiveness, perfectionism, etc. Sparing you the long and gory details of my battles with these things, it's safe to say that my brain plays a lot of the dark classics, like "you are impossibly and permanently alone", "you are a failure on a fundamental level", "you do not get to feel joy", and so on. You already know the chaos and destruction that this vibration causes in life. I did a Vipassana retreat at 24, for for the first three days started to feel my angle on things shifting. I felt quite optimistic about meditation and buddhism for those days. Days 4-10 however were extremely dark and agonizing and full of twitching, angry reactivity for me. That horrible feeling that "in the end... I lose. Everyone else gets to be happy, but not me. I'm special. I'm special and dark and a wretched creature of hate and I do not get to taste heaven, ever. I am alone with my misery and there's no end." was chewing on me in a big way. I watched the thoughts and tried my best not to fight. By the very end, I actually felt very demoralized, and a little insane even. I tried to keep an optimistic view that I had gone through some painful growth and had bravely learned to face things in myself. Ever since that retreat, I became obsessive about personal development, spirituality etc, whereas I had previously been a bitter enemy of all religion. I continued to practice meditation, but continued to feel like life was a battle that I was losing, to be in a ton of pain and failing to address the root causes of pain, and to feel extremely and maddeningly STUCK in misery, confusion, addictive patterns, artist block, perfectionism, inability to date or even have friends, etc. Refusing to admit defeat to this darkness inside me, I became the self help junkie. I watched hours and hours of videos, read books, etc, on the subjects of self mastery, depression, dating, spirituality. I tried to optimize things in my life where I could. I dropped cigarettes entirely. I started working out and meditating daily. I started approaching strangers when I was out, and sometimes even making out with them, to my utter shock. I cleaned up what I ate. I regulated how often I allowed myself to use weed or alcohol. The darkness associated with my identity and my perfectionism and stuckness with my work did not budge, however. I also vowed to give up weed for 3 months, which was going to be hard. Two weeks into the weed break, I watched Leo Gura's videos on 5-meo-DMT and was very intrigued for what it might be able to do for me. As if the universe was watching me, a week later some friends told me a shaman would be coming by to administer some "toad venom". I had already used LSD and mushrooms a few times and decided to go for it, seeing as I was already so into meditation and basically desperate for my damaged ego to go away. As with vipassana, 5MEO opened up the gate into myself, and what I saw was a goddamn nightmare. I had an absolutely hellish trip, a panic attack, and awoke from it to find myself tearing at my flesh. I felt like I had failed the ultimate battle and I may never recover. What followed was one of the most depressing and confusing weeks of my life, with my mind sickeningly spinning with confused and panicky thoughts about the deepest possible questions, which had for so many years now already been my obsession. The main reason for writing this post is to illustrate the cognitive dissonance going on in my mind about spirituality, control, and happiness, which I basically just need to write down for my sanity, and because my friends and dates absolutely do not want to hear this crap anymore. I am miserable stop focusing negatively wait that itself is a negative thought wait, that thought is a negative thought about a negative thought about a negative thought ugh i'm trapped in negativity and it sucks and I hate it and reject it oh look that's resistance to reality or god and that's the root of it don't resist wait, trying not to resist is a resistance against trying to resist Ok this is a mess and it's my personal fault because I can't let go There's nothing to let go of, reality is perfect, free will is an illusion Is it though? It really seems like I should be able to make some good choices and turn this around Reality doesn't feel perfect at all it feels like dog shit All the so-called good choices I've made have deepened my misery oh god... my future is only pain I'm so scared to make decisions because my decisions really have caused this hell and it's my fault No it isn't the illusion of self and separateness is the source of pain so let go I am not a person who can let go, i am an unhappy person who is going towards more misery this sucks, might it feel good to blow my brains out? probably not I need a coffee I need sex I don't deserve sex because I'm a miserable person who makes women miserable Don't be a perfectionist get your needs met Are needs of the flesh legitimate and need to be met to be happy? I wouldn't know because I'm incapable of getting my needs met ugh Oh that's the ego But I have god damn needs I never could meet my needs in my life and i'm 30 i am going towards pain and despair There's the ego thinking it controls life, it doesn't but yes it also kind of does and it has needs and we need to meet it it's a goddamn emergency My heart is pounding and it's uncomfortable I NEED A COFFEE fine we need to quit all this stressful spiritual crap before we go crazy we're already crazy we've been crazy as long as we can remember all you ever think is crazy fear garbage just get the fucking coffee I need to quit all this wait no i need to double down on all this wait no. I need to make a huge god damn list of everything I need to change. Don't let fear win! That's resistance Jesus christ. I seriously don't think I'm driving this ship. Coffee. Free will is an illusion. Oh my god shut up.

@Erlend K thanks for your advice, it is appreciated. I read Dante's Inferno when I was 16 and immediately identified myself with the dark night of the soul in that book. It feels like it started then and never stopped, and evey day is another waking up lost in a dark wood, knowing things are far from ok, and with no direction to go that feels anything like a good idea. Every day brings a new epic battle in my head about "am i just sick and need to be medicated, and am resisting out of ego? Or is that medication going to make it worse? Or is it just a huge procrastination that will delay the relief i desperately desite even further, because I will know I am in a drug haze all along?" And a huge amount of contradictions clashing within me about "do i desperately need to keep working and seeking, or desperately need to stop, or desperately need to banish the thought of desperation in the first place??" Teachers, therapists, coaches, friends all tell me to go easy on myself, to give myself a break. I think they do not understand just how painfully needy I am to discover what the hell that even is. I have always hated vacation, have lost sight of what feels good and replenishing, and have really only felt the ability to let go of myself when drunk or high, and a ton of shame about my self created misery and inability to let go that just exacerbates and reinforces the hell. I am acutely aware of the totality of my behavior and thoughts being totally derived from a baseline assumption and psychological landscape of pain. I am terribly confused about confusion itself. Hurting about pain. And really more than anything scared of fear itself, because I see clearly that it can kill me. The dramatic war that is my life is beyond tiresome. I wish i had any idea how to back off or give myself a break, because it's clear that I need it, and clear that I do not at least consciously know how to take a break, when my mind is in an almost permanent cycle of exhaustion, panic, seeking, questioning, etc. From the outside I am lying on the beach chilling. On the inside i am staring the demon that is myself in the face, aware that I am an expert self torturer, losing a battle against the devil, always strategizing and fighting.

@Emerald it's hard to say. I certainly had the belief that i was somehow an outsider or special in my darkness even earlier than that. I never felt like I belonged or got to enjoy the normal things. I always gravitated towards villains and monsters rather than heroes even as a child. I have a mother who was an abuse victim and never healed from serious depression and anxiety and to this day despairs of still being so twisted up, so i imagine i learned to fear and fight life from her. Since i have been off weed and tried the 5meo I have never felt so mentally ill im my life. I feel on the verge of checking myself into a mental home some days, or going on ssris, which i cant help but see as the ultimate failure. I am spinning in so much indecision and fear that i do not have faith in even the simplest self improvement habits anymore, bc it seems that i have wound up here by being too self denying and self controlling in the first place. I feel utterly lost and ready to take drastic measures.

What is your personal system of organizing all your projects and making sure you execute on them? Do you recommend resources or examples or books on this topic? My underdeveloped system looks like this: Elements involved: Problem, Task, Habit, Concept, Tool System: - Maintain a list of current projects / problems to be solved now, and on hold projects and problems that will be addressed later - Keep a page of notes regarding concepts and tools for each project or problem - Maintain a master Todo list with tasks to do now, and tasks on hold for later - Maintain a list of daily habits, and habits currently being intentionally broken (by abstinence or replacement) ++ Some points of difficulty and confusion: - I keep a master todo list as opposed to multiple project specific ones as to not forget items, which blurs into one long confusing list - The visual representation of the overwhelming number of problems and tasks and practices can make me feel helpless / depressed - I have my daily practices (meditation etc) and I don't know whether or not to mix up project based practices into that list, or keep them separated

What's in a name? Some companies spends hundreds of thousands of dollars and months of focus on naming their brand. I have a few different brand entities that I'm trying to name, and have been brutally quagmired with this problem for years. Not having a name you believe in means you can't throw all your weight into cranking out content and propagating that brand, so it's a serious bottleneck I have to deal with. What are some of your strategies for naming things?

@Leo Gura @Jecht Spencer Thanks for your input guys. I've finally picked a name after years of struggling, and united all my platforms under one name. I really just had to pick something that wasn't so negative, and now I feel like I can totally let go of worrying about it (even though it's inevitably not perfect) and just crank out content relentlessly. It doesn't have to be 100%, but it should meet some basic criteria... at that point you can let go and not freak out. Thanks!

@Systemic Thanks, word generators are definitely useful. @A way to Actualize Yes, negativity is the main issue I've been stuck on. I had chosen a name that has some obvious negativity to it (it included the word "Bad"...) and it has definitely taken a toll. A negative name isn't something you want to proudly shout from the hilltops.

Just wanted to share this great resource I found for this problem http://phrontistery.info/

@Jecht Spencer Thanks for your advice. I agree predominantly with that, but with some caveats. I do find myself subtly judging things based on the name alone, so even if a name is MOSTLY arbitrary, it can be negatively consequential in a big way. One subtle example would be the band "Audioslave". It just sounds so uncreative to me, and evokes images of dudes vaping in guitar center, so I'd never bother giving the music a chance (totally irrational/emotional of course). I made the following rules for naming the brand, and I wonder if they are so limiting that it has screwed me over: 1. It must be the only thing that comes up when you google it, BEFORE it has a following 2. You need to be able to shout it in someone's ear in a bar without having to spell it out 3. It can't be more than two words ... and it should, but doesn't have to, have something sensory associated with it. I do already have small followings on a couple of the platforms I hope to flip into this new name, so I'm really eager to just figure this out already and not be all timid when people ask what the stuff is named, and just get the momentum rolling. It seems like a decision that should be a little more emotional than all this criteria I have set up. Some names that I think are good Snapchat, Google, Zappos, Facebook, Aphex Twin

I work for a company that is ridiculously successful at this (you've heard of them), and I've often asked the same questions as a content (art) creator. Coming from the frame of wanting views is one thing, but this company's goal is all about making people want to SHARE things. Wanting to get a lot of views is really synonymous with wanting shares. You can only force your content to appear in front of so many people, but if they feel inclined to share it, it is putting itself in front of new people without you directly causing that. So if you are really scientific about what people want to go out of their way to focus their precious, scattered attention on, and then go so far as to share it, what are some reasons they do that? - It speaks directly to the consumer's sense of identity (I want to absorb this into myself) - It is extremely obvious what the content is about or what is to be gained, from the title / thumbnail, and they don't have to invest any time figuring it out or being lost - It is very short and easy to consume and not a burdensome thing to send to a friend - It is like an "emotional gift" that you can give someone, and is obvious as such (ie "PUPPY FALLING ASLEEP") - It serves as a way to connect or reinforce relationships ("this is so us!") Leo's titles are obviously well suited for these things and carefully designed to do so. They appeal to that striving inner impulse and sense of things relevant to ME, not just relevant to the creator. I personally observe that a lot of art and music culture seems to be completely oriented around the artist, and it gives me a little feeling of disgust to imagine someone sitting around and thinking of things that are only cool to them, and not giving any thought to the people consuming it. At a lot of shows, and with a lot of videos people are trying to promote, I often think "yeah but why do I care?"

I really relate to this dichotomy. I've had a conflicted relationship with writing computer music for years, having performed maybe 40 or so times over the years and released several albums, but running into some serious confusion particularly because of how staring at computers for hours makes me feel (quite different from shredding on the piano), and also because of the rampant ridiculousness of the broken music industry, especially in the underground. The people you have to deal with in that world are pervasively mentally ill, drug addicted, delusional, egotistical, sometimes even violent etc., and the fact that you are fighting an obscenely uphill battle with regards to the fact that people have simply decided that music, as a product, is just "free" now, and the only money you'll be making is from shows or licensing or sound design work, certainly doesn't help the health of the scene. People who are making music now are either doing it for higher, spiritual kinds of reasons, or they are so delusional / ignorant that they think the pittance they make at the door is really great. Usually they are losing money for a lot of events. I'm often tempted to go into science, or something that serious people take seriously, and show up on time, and don't get all mashed on ketamine to do. If you are an artistically minded person who is curious about science and the truth of the human psyche, it seems harder than ever before to monetize art directly due to the total devaluation of digital content. The "successful" musicians I know managed to get their music in video games and films. The way artists make money has been changing. Consider how to take advantage of the new scene rather than be a victim of it.

Thank you for creating this forum. Having watched all of Leo's videos, gone on a Vipassana meditation retreat / started meditation practice regularly, and consumed quite a lot of books on personal development, I'm feeling quite bought into the general precepts of personal development, and have found them to be profoundly true, and useful in battling some of my worst problems (depression, trying to live and work honestly, dating, intense negativity, creating art in spite of resistance, etc). I wanted to open up a discussion of some of the friction areas where these concepts "fight" with other beliefs, and create sometimes frustrating debates in your mind. It rings true that inner battles both in the foreground and the background are at the root of neuroses. It would be useful to hear what has helped smooth out these "paradoxes" in your practice. Some of my friction areas for starters: PROBLEM: I'm on this journey because I was disgusted by my behaviors and the terrible results I was getting, so I'm constantly going against the grain of my default behaviors and impulses, exerting pretty harsh discipline. I often suspect that I'm oppressing my lower self too much, and feel like a caged animal going crazy. I'm often getting told "you're too hard on yourself". SOLUTIONS: Changing the paradigm will just take time no matter what, and there will be a period where your default behaviors resist the higher self. Most advice from friends and family are well meaning but wrong. PROBLEM: What other people generally want to do is in conflict with personal development (ie drinking, smoking weed, watching TV, gossiping etc) and I can feel people being alienated or feeling judged when I don't do those things with them, and I don't want to be totally isolated myself. For example, I have weed addicted friends who can really only tolerate hanging out if they are smoking weed, and I don't like making them go down a spiral of doubting themselves when I don't join as I used to. SOLUTIONS: Personal development should eventually translate to a deeper sense of happiness, which will win over other people moreso than their desire to do drugs with me.

Thank you, very nice to hear from you directly. I do see this point quite clearly, and agree that it's the best thing to do, and have had my eye on that target. My results with that have been a little shaky however, probably for reasons related to my first point. Since I was already habituated to going around the world with a very harsh, judgmental eye, glaring in the streets, always quick to see straight through to the cynical manipulations and dishonesty in much of the pop culture, advertising, and ploys all around us (I work smack in Hollywood for a certain media company that you would love to eviscerate), now that I find myself banishing yet more pleasures and people and saying more "no", I'm concerned about feeding my judgmental nature and making it even harder to make friends. I get told so often to just relax and be open to things and say yes, and it seems that I'm going even further in the other direction. I don't want to be such a hater, and at the same time I resonate very well with your advice as far as surgically cutting out problematic behaviors and people. Meditation helps with the root issues with the anger and judgmentalness, it's just quite a long game of course