Finding Joy Together.

One of the things that I’ve been finding difficulty with lately is connected to where I find joy. Let me list some of them for you, and see if you can pick up a common thread.

Performing. In various ways, but just in general performing captures it fairly well.

Spending intentional time with someone, perhaps in conversation or doing something we enjoy.

Playing board games with people.

Have you figured it out? They all involve - and, indeed, require - other people. And that’s a problem. Because, for various reasons, there won’t always be other people available. And, in fact, often they aren’t. Perhaps because of work, or disability, or other complicating factors - besides which performing often implying a larger audience, which has its own challenges.

And then the one that I haven’t listed - music, particularly playing music, and especially playing music without a care for how loud I am, and on the piano - rather directly impacts other people within earshot. So I often need to turn to other things, which, though enjoyable, don’t often bring joy in the same way as these.

I’m not sure where the answer to this lies, or if there even is one. Perhaps in finding a new joy I can do by myself? For instance, when I was younger, reading was a common one that I would use. But then the challenge of that is that I’m very still for that - and I often have too much energy, that I need to use, I’m somewhat restless (yay, ADHD). Audiobooks are handy there, and fill some of a gap. Perhaps in terms of physical energy, I could look into doing dance lessons, or some form of exercise or sport. But often these cost money (which is always in short supply, working two days an week), and take time to get to - which, when I don’t have a car, makes things a little trickier.

Is this a problem that other people have faced? I’m interested in hearing people’s thoughts on this. Because unfortunately, the upshot of all of this is - I’m often not spending that much time doing things that bring me joy. And when work is a source of burnout, I need something else to balance that out - rest is part of that, and I’m good at that part. But part of it needs to be finding joy, too. And I think I need to get better at that, somehow. Because I don’t think there’s enough joy in my life. (Particularly when it is part of my name.)

Dearest Evan Hansen.

I know I'm rather late to the party, but today I finally watched Dear Evan Hansen. I'd heard of it before many times, and Owl City's cover of "Waving Through A Window" is fantastic, but I didn't have an opportunity to see it in person - and I avoid listening to a musical's score before actually watching the show. Now, the show still isn't here in Sydney - but the movie is finally out on Netflix. Of course, it's a bit different to the musical, in multiple ways. But it certainly resonated with me, so I wanted to write down some of my thoughts.

While it's never specifically mentioned (though depression and anxiety are), it feels obvious that Evan (and I'd say also Connor, most likely) is autistic. Though I didn't have the same experience as Evan in high school exactly - I did have a group of friends - my group was the "out" group, as such. I certainly felt that loneliness, that feeling of never being noticed, or feeling like I wouldn't make an impact. And feeling like I could definitely never ever have a conversation with that girl I liked? Yep, that was a thing. Again, not to the level that we see with Evan - but much of how Evan's story started resonated with me.

Interestingly, much of the end of the story resonates with me as well - learning the value of honesty and openness, even though it's challenging. Evan posting his confession online, and then just putting his phone away, reminds me of when I came out online. That day I just turned my phone off, and I went bushwalking with some friends. I knew that there were people that were going to have very strong opinions, and very negative opinions, about that. Or perhaps it was more separating from my (at the time) wife that was the issue. I remember feeling a similar gut-wrench around when I was first starting to talk to people about looking at porn. I have a very different view on it now, but at the time, I very much held the traditional Christian view of it being quite sinful etc, and so was very much hiding it and feeling great shame and such around it. But I've talked about that at length in other places and at other times.

And that freedom and new confidence that he seems to be able to find then as well - I think that's something that I've been able to experience myself too, as I've lived more openly as myself, and been less tied down to lies or to acts or to being something I'm not. I still have challenges, fuck yes I do. But I'm able to face them much better than I used to. And some things that used to be challenges, just aren't challenges in that way any more.

On a more serious note - I've also been to that place of depression. While it doesn't plague me now as it has previously (in thanks partly to medication, and partly to a great support network), and I've never tried to take my life, I've gotten to the point of figuring out how I would do it. (Generalities, not specifics.) Sometimes you can point to this or that as the reason behind something, the cause of mood or energy being low; but sometimes, your brain just isn't working right. It's not your fault, it's not anything that's necessarily happened, it just goes weird sometimes. So figuring out how to work through that, or finding ways to not get to that really low state, are really important for people that do struggle with this.

On a less heavy note, I did quite enjoy the music. And, as usual, the romantic part of my brain got swept up in the romantic subplot pretty strongly. sighs Even when I do have someone/people that I'm in relationship with, there's still a longing and yearning there when I'm alone, which is difficult to know if it will ever feel filled. My heart - or my brain - has a difficult tendency of developing rather strong feelings for many more people than I have the time or energy for. (And also seems to have a tendency of developing feelings for people who don't have much time or energy in the first place. But that's its own thing.) 

Stories do a good job at making me feel pretty emotional. I think that's why I fell in love with them growing up - first in books, but these days more often in movies, or theatre, or shows. I think it's also why telling stories is something I often try to do in a lot of what I create. But it's also something that I need to be aware of, so that that emotion doesn't carry me away too far into making rash decisions and the like. It can be quite good, though, for just that catharsis. That's something I get from stories quite a bit.

I rather liked this movie/musical. This post wasn't really meant to be a review as such, and isn't really formatted like my typical reviews. But hey, I'll chuck in that thought there for free.

Good, Better, Rest.

This Tuesday night just gone was meant to be another performance of Rainbow Religion. Instead, sickness got in the way. And the whole process of that got me ruminating a bit (not literally, I’m not a cow now), so I wanted to write down some of my thoughts. Much of this is probably rehashing things I’ve said before at some point, but I’ve written a lot. It’s hard to remember what exactly I’ve put down and when.

I’ve been kinda sick for the past few weeks. The first week, it started with a bad sore throat. Like, hurts to swallow level, hurts to drink water and such. That was shit. Then, week two, my tongue decided to get some sores on it. That felt weird to me, so I went into the GP, got some tests done. End of that week, they said, “Hey, this might be glandular fever. We’re just going to run another test.” (There’s not really any treatment as such for it; just rest, drink a lot of water, don’t do heavy lifting. This was right before a weekend where I was moving, too!) They come back to me start of last week, and yep, it is. By that time, though, tongue is mostly better, can’t see much visibly, just hurts a bit. But that didn’t really change for all of last week. Then Monday this week, day before my performance, my voice is gravel and my throat is not great. I try and do all the things to get it better - but woke up Tuesday morning, still bad. Could I have still done the performance? In a pinch, probably. But my body would have given me even more shit than it already was.

Because I had been needing to rest, and I hadn’t been resting enough. I hadn’t been allowing myself the chance to heal, recuperate. At the same time, though, it’s not like I was doing that much? I don’t do sport or anything, and I don’t work full time. But I enjoy doing things too much. There are always too many things I want to do. Even just in the last week, I’ve had two big new project ideas. My brain just keeps coming up with more. Yay, ADHD! So that’s one part of why rest is hard.

But the other part is the society that we’ve built. Rest really hasn’t been built into it. We’ve been getting better, slowly - but particularly for neurodivergent people, and for disabled people, it’s still such a struggle. I work about three and a bit days a week most weeks, and that’s an intentional choice, because I know I don’t have the energy to be working full time. But even at this level - I’m burning out, and crashing, and needing a lot more rest then I’m already giving myself. But we have to work to live. And I’m not “disabled enough” for the Disability Support Pension. And the regular Jobseeker payments are - not good. Both in a monetary sense, and in so many others.

I need to rest. And I need to rest better, and more. And I need to find work that doesn’t burn me out as much. (I’ve been looking to various degrees for about six months or so now, finding work is hard.) And I don’t know the answer. I just hope I figure things out before I break too badly. 

Looking back on 2022.

I’m grateful that this year has both started, and ended, with friends. (And some of the same ones, to boot!) But there’s been a lot of different things happening in between the two of those. So let’s take a moment to look at that.

Much of the year, unfortunately, was characterised by burnout, and depression. I feel like I’ve talked about that before in a few different posts this year, so I’ll just brush over it here. In short, though - there were moments this year, where in some ways I was at the worst I’ve been, in terms of emotional health. I’m glad that the worst of it was only brief moments; but there were some decently long seasons where things were quite low, and quite bad. Where it took most of my energy to just get through the day, and get to tomorrow, and I didn’t really have a lot to look forward to in life, or that I felt like I was living for. I’m certainly hoping 2023 doesn’t get a repeat of that. But there’s only so much you can do. 

It certainly wasn’t all bad, though. And there were a lot of really incredible things that happened this year. Some I’m not really comfortable talking about in a public space like this - but I’ll go over the ones I can. 

Probably the biggest one was Sydney Fringe. Early in the year, it was just a vague idea; like, oh, let’s put this thing in and see where it goes and if it works. And then it was happening. And I was getting photos for it, putting the songs together, organising a venue, getting offered a place in the Limitless disability hub (which was amazing!), and doing it. And getting so many people loving it, and wanting to hear more, and it really resonating with people. I’m still hoping to do it again in more places (if you know somewhere that might have me, let me know!), but organising shit is hard with ADHD 😅

Another big thing was The Boy From Oz, a musical I did with my old local theatre group in Campbelltown. I hadn’t done a musical for a few years, and I had a bunch of fun. I was just part of the chorus, but we were still on stage quite a bit (so many quick changes!), and had a lot of fun songs. It was such a great team to work with, both on stage and off, and I had a great time. I hope I get the chance to do some more theatre work this year - perhaps closer to home, this time?

The cast and crew there were also great with the other big thing that happened this year - my name change. I’d been using a shortened version of my old name for a while as an interim (it had also been an old nickname with both family and friends, so it was an easier transition), but I knew that I did want to change my name. And eventually, I figured it out. So I changed it - first with some close friends; then with some wider groups of friends; then publicly, and finally legally as well. It did take a bit of getting used to, and I still run into some issues with it (the most amusing being that over the phone, people can mishear Raven as my old last name), but it’s been mostly really good 😊 and just in time for both shows!

More broadly - I’ve had a lot of good time with a lot of good people. Part of that has been communities I’ve been in, like my queer church, or other (online and offline) queer groups; part of that is also just friends. Particularly more recently, I’ve been having a lot of good time one-on-one with people, and I’ve really noticed the positive affect that it’s had on me. Especially as I’m struggling with burnout (which drains me, or leaves me with less energy), having intentional time with individual people (which gives me energy) has been really important.

Moving in to next year (or, as I’m writing, this year), 2023 - I don’t know what to expect. I don’t really plan that far ahead. I’ve got a couple of fun things happening over the next couple of months, like a trip down to Melbourne; but after that, I’m not really sure. But here are a couple of ideas that I would like to happen.

I’d like to do another theatre project. Whether that’s a musical, or a play - I just really enjoy them. They’re a lot of fun, and it would be good to do that again. Hopefully, something where I can play a character that’s queer 👀

I’d like to take Rainbow Religion to more venues. Probably starting off with some other affirming churches, but I’d like it to be broader than that as well. Money is a bit of a limitation with moving broader, though. But I would really like to do that. 🌈

I’d also just like to do more with my music. Ideally offline, and doing in-person performances; but that would probably mean buying a keyboard first. (A bit pricey, but doable.) Even just posting more regularly online would be good, though. And writing more. Maybe something for Fringe? Who knows! 🎹

Though speaking of, I do want to do Fringe again this year. But right now, I don’t know what I’m going to do for it. This time last year, I basically had all of the songs already. I’d written them over the last year and a bit, and just collated them for Fringe. But right now, I don’t really have anything like that. I have a random stand-up show I started writing? So who knows, I could end up doing that randomly 😂 Or maybe I show off bits from the musical I’m writing about queer faith. 

I’d also like to travel. It’s not really something I’ve done much for myself - most of what I’ve done has been for other things I’ve been involved with, or because of stuff that’s happened. But it is something I’d really love to do. I think Uluru or New Zealand are the two that feel most doable to me, in terms of time and money. But we’ll see! ✈️

I also just want to continue spending time with people, and being more intentional about that. Building relationships, deepening and strengthening them, trying not to leave people behind. Something I really struggle with is that I connect with so many people well, and want to give time and energy to so many people, but I don’t have infinite time or energy or attention! So I can forget about people, or need to focus elsewhere, and that can feel shitty on both ends. 🫂

I also just want to do more gaming! ♟️ But that’s also one of the ways I enjoy spending time with people, so it links in to the previous one. 

That is a lot of things 😅 but hopefully, at least some of that can happen this year. While also being healthy, and taking care of myself (emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually), because that’s really important too. But yeah 🙂 that’s my look back at last year, and some thoughts and hopes moving into this new year. I hope it’s a good one for you, and I hope it’s a good one for me as well!

Barriers.

I think I talk around this topic a fair bit, but I feel like writing this out. I guess maybe there's a reason I write about it so much....

There are a lot of things that I love to do. And that I'm good at doing. Like music; playing it, writing it, singing, that sort of thing. Speaking, I'm good at doing that - getting up in front of a crowd and presenting, even at basically no notice. Acting; plays, musicals, love 'em. I've done some screen work too, but it's really not the same. Writing - I mean, that's what I'm doing now. It's what I do with music, what I used to do with stories (I really can't remember the last time I wrote a story, it might have been back in uni), what I do sometimes with poetry, what I've tried a couple of times with theatre. I also love things like cooking, and languages, and board games, and hiking, and camping, and puzzles, and reading, and more, but I'm not quite as good at those things; or maybe they're a bit aside from the main point I'm making. Anyway.

Every now and then, I have brief moments where I'll get to do one or more of these things for people. Sometimes that's just sitting down to play a song to somebody; sometimes it's doing a Sydney Fringe show; sometimes that's getting up and doing a dramatic reading of something; sometimes it's doing an audition; sometimes it's people reading something I've written. And people will go, "hey, that's good!" Depending on the person, there might even be some surprise there, like, "where did that come from?" Sometimes it's more like, "we need to see more of this!" Either way, it's.....like, it's nice, of course. It's good to hear that people love it, and think I'm good at these things. But I've known that for a long time. These things are - they're what I was made to do. This is what brings me life, brings me joy. (I mean, not the only things; spending time with other people is a notable other thing that also does it, but I've talked about that in other places.) This is what I want to spend my time and energy on.

But, for multiple reasons, I don't. Or I can't.

Part of that is capitalism. All of these are things that it is very hard to get paid to do. You need to have been doing something for a long time, or know people, and also be very lucky. You need to be able to focus on this one thing with most of what you have. Spoilers, I'm ADHD, that's not happening. My brain just doesn't work that way.

I remember when I was younger, I used to write like crazy. I would be writing songs all the time, it felt like every other day. Some people might know that I've written over 250 songs. At least 200 of those are from just my time in uni and high school. But then; work happened. Most of my time, most of my energy, were out the door. I didn't have space to create with. I had become burnt out by the world; and that's been true to varying degrees for my entire working life, I think. The first year after uni, I wrote one song the whole year. It was about feeling like I was being crushed by the weight of the world, and the weight of work; Atlas.

And in this world, you can't just not work. Not if you want to be a part of the world. You want a roof over your head, you want to have food, to have water, to have electricity, a warm bed, clothes? Then get to work. How dare you think that those are basic rights, that should be free to all people..... If you can't get paid doing what you love, and you can't not get paid, it doesn't leave you with many options.

So yes. I would love to finish the queer faith musical I've been working on. I'd love to get Rainbow Religion out there more. I'd love to write the next show. I'd love to be performing more, be back on stage again, have more people hearing my music. But I'm tired. I'm burnt out. My brain isn't giving me ideas any more, most of the time. And even with what I do have, getting it out there is hard. I have to fight against burnout, I have to fight against being ADHD and autistic, I have to fight against the busyness of life. A lot of the time, I just don't have the energy for that. And so, nothing happens. I wish that wasn't true. But it is.

The other hard part about that, though - is that because I'm not doing these things as much, I'm getting drained even more. I'm losing energy faster. And I feel like the time that I have is wasted. Because I'm spending it doing other things, that feel like they don't really matter that much (read: work), rather than what I love to do and am good at doing. I have to try and not think about it too much, because it gets me feeling very depressed and hopeless and down and shitty and emotional very very quickly. It makes me literally feel like I'm wasting vast chunks of my time, just throwing it into a black hole; and that there's so much of my life that I just haven't lived. (Again, this is mainly me talking about work stuff; time with people is still great and good and helpful.) And yeah. That's hard. And I don't really know what I can do about it. But that's where I'm at. And where I've been at for a while.

Turning 30.

Today, I’m turning thirty. Since we use a base ten numbering system, that feels significant to people. It isn’t really, but it feels that way. I thought what might be interesting, though, is looking at a decade ago - 2012, turning twenty, and the difference between then and now. 

I was still writing this blog back then. I went back and checked. I don’t think I’d been doing it for that long, though. It was my last year at university, studying a Bachelor of Music at the Kingswood campus of Western Sydney Uni. I was still living at home, and working at a local Italian restaurant called Luigi’s. Next year I would start up a job leading camps and Duke of Edinburgh expeditions, but I didn’t know I’d gotten the job until December. I’m not sure if I’d even done the interview at this point. I was a regular at the evening church that I’d grown up in at Campbelltown, often on the music team, or sound and tech. From memory, I was also head over heels for someone - but that was true of me most of the time then. (It didn’t work out, dear reader, but in a fun new way. That wasn’t until next year, though. Maybe even early 2014? Not sure, time is wibbly-wobbly.) 

Back then, I was churning out music at the rate of knots. There was a couple of times I’d do songwriting challenges, to test myself, and stretch the brain a bit, so to speak. Maybe I should do that sort of thing again. It’s harder when you don’t have the same amount of time that you used to. I was driving around in an old metallic green Volvo that my grandpa had bought and fixed up - we used to call it the tank. I had so many people that I was connecting to at uni - both through my course, and also through the Christian group there - and I was really having the time of my life. I loved uni so much. But that was all wrapping up, and a new season was starting. A season of work. 

I think since uni finished, there’s been - maybe two? - people from there who I’ve connected with on some regular or repeated level at some point. But honestly, that’s fairly standard of most of the different seasons of life for me. I don’t really stay connected to people that well. I care about them a lot, and miss them when they’re gone - but tend to only look at photos on Facebook they put up, wish people happy birthday now and then, bump into someone once in a blue moon. I’m not good at staying connected to people, or taking initiative with that. It’s something I want to get better at, particularly because I know one-on-one connection is something that I really crave and that energises and rejuvenates me.

But work has probably changed things in a bigger way for me. Before then, my life revolved around learning, in various ways. Work had started to come along, but it was ancillary, a bit on the side. Suddenly, it became the focus, that everything else warped around, that gobbled up most of my time. And it has repeatedly, and routinely, burnt me out. There’s only one job since then which I’ve lasted in for more than two years; and I was only doing that job for one day a week. I haven’t been fired from a job (yet, and very surprisingly with a couple of them), but many jobs I’ve had to leave because of burn out.  And that’s not really something that I’ve ever solved. I’ve never found a job that hasn’t drained in me in one way or another. 

I think the closest I found to that was actually the job that I would end up doing next year - leading camps, and Duke of Ed trips. I was regularly outside and active, interacting with small groups in intentional ways, building relationships and learning new skills, meeting great people and having a lot of fun.

Unfortunately, the flip side to it was that you’re doing camps. You’re doing multi-day trips. So you’re regularly away from home for multiple days and nights in a row, in ways that aren’t consistent. So I wasn’t really able to commit to anything regular, and I had very little time outside of work. Particularly for someone who really enjoys creative projects and such, that was really difficult, and didn’t end up being sustainable.

I don’t know if there’s a happy medium somewhere, maybe there is. You would hope so. 

Thirty is a strange milestone. It feels very adult. Twenty you’re kinda just starting out, just getting into things. But now, you’ve been doing things a while, you should be getting the hang of things, settling into a rhythm, something like that. Of course, life is always a bit more complicated - and being neurodivergent, the standard narrative never fits particularly well. 

I feel like there are some pretty amazing things that I’ve been able to accomplish and do in the time that I’ve had so far, for sure. I’ve written and created a lot, connected to a bunch of people, done talks and plays and musicals and more; had moments of recognition now and then. But it would be easy for me to see the flip side to that as well - there are so many projects left unfinished, so many songs and stories that haven’t been heard or shared with others, so many ideas that haven’t seen the light of day. I’m learning, though, slowly, that we can only do so much with the time that we have. There will always be more we want to fit in life than we are able to. And even if there are times where much of what we do feels wasted, or worthless - perhaps they are bringing value to others. Or perhaps that is a sign to change what you are doing. I’m still learning, and there are many answers I don’t have. 

Over this year, there’s been a lot of up and down. Particularly down. I’ve had many moments and seasons of depression and hopelessness, where I’ve seen little point to living. I am grateful that I am not there now; that I am able to get through the days with a little more energy and focus. Meds probably helps; but people have also been a big help, as is often the case. I have many beautiful and amazing people around me that give me reasons to keep living, and looking forward to another day, to the future. Even in the last few weeks, I’ve felt myself getting better. And I’m grateful for all that the people around me give. I seem to say the same thing year after year, but it continues being true - I am here largely because of the people around me, and the hope, joy, and love they bring. So to each and every one of you, thank you. You have helped me to thirty. You have helped me to here, and now; you have given me life. 

On Projects, Time, Neurodiversity, Capitalism, and Money

A while back, I did a post talking about some projects that I was working on. I thought I might do something similar, because it's something I've been particularly noticing lately.

The main thing I'm pouring a bunch of time into at the moment is a campaign that I'm running using a system called Relics, made by a friend of mine, which has been good fun. TL;DR on the system is each player is an angel disguised as a human in the modern world, and God and heaven are both shut off, and they have to figure out what the heck they're doing. I'm doing a fair bit of writing for it, and I've never run a campaign before, so figuring a lot out! Haven't done much story writing in a long time, so I'm remembering all of that again and the various difficulties or things that came with that. But then there's also improv and such that I need to account for.....I am at best okay at some sorts of improv, but I'm not great 😅 so we'll see how that goes.

The main thing I'd like to be doing is getting my Fringe show, Rainbow Religion, out there again. I was able to do two performances - which is twice as many as I was expecting to do - but it still feels like it could get out to more people. I do have it available to watch online, which is great, but I'd love to see if I can perform it again in more places and such. But that probably means a bit of money investment, or just doing it for some queer churches potentially.

Another project I've thought of is doing an a cappella medley from Bo Burnham's Inside, with all of the songs. My thought was to start off doing one with just the four Bezos songs, as a smaller one to get into it, and then doing the rest. But first I need to figure out exactly how to mash them all together, and then arrange all the different sections for the different voices (probably doing four voices?), and then record it, and hopefully do a video for it too. Which is a lot, and I haven't really even started. Each time I play it in the car, I start singing some of the different parts and hearing how it will sound in my head, and having a good idea of which sections I'd use from each of the songs, but I still need to actually put it together.

Kinda a project, kinda not - got a talk that I'm doing at my church in a couple of weeks, so I've been spending bits of time working on that. It's been a long time since I've done a "sermon" as such (I did a talk about neurodiversity a little while back, but that felt somewhat different to a sermon), and doing it post-deconstruction/reconstruction feels very different. We'll see how that comes together, I think it's mostly done.

I also wrote another song for my musical about queer faith the other day. It's a project that I got the idea from near the end of last year, had a flurry of energy around and doing bits for, then haven't touched for most of this year. But I'm hoping that at some point it will get finished and see the light of day. Thinking about perhaps trying to look into grants or artist-in-residence type things I could apply for to help me with it. I just need a bit more motivation, and really some other people to help me make it happen. Making a musical is a big job.

Then there's a company that I'm going to be helping put a podcast together. Probably can't talk about that too much right now, but it's going to be interesting. I don't really listen to podcasts - I watch a couple - so I feel like I'm probably not going to be able to contribute much in terms of what it should look like. But we'll see how we go!

Then I also have a whole bunch of projects that are just on the backburner now, and have been for various lengths of time. Like the language I was creating, or my old musical, or multiple albums I've written, or board games I was making, and more besides.

Part of that is thanks to neurodiversity, particularly ADHD. It means that my brain wants to do a whole bunch of different things, and also do them all at once, rather than focus on one thing (also because of how it interacts with autism). But it's also because of a lack of time, and energy. Which is because of things like work. Which is because of things like capitalism. Y'know. Needing money to survive and all that, needing to work to survive. Which is shitty. And feels like it shouldn't be the case in an abundant world? But still very much is. And that's hard - knowing that there's so many ideas that my brain has, and so much I could do, and most of it I won't be able to do. Most of that potential won't be filled, because the vast majority of my time and energy has to get poured into survival. And I rather hate that. But I also don't know how to change that, bar miracles happening.

Of course, folks are always welcome to support me financially - I have a Patreon that people can contribute to with small amounts on a regular basis if they feel able to, but most of the folks I know probably aren't. But yeah. Being able to live in the world and actually do what you're good at, and put more of your time and energy into that, would be rather nice.