Yeah, I think I understand why you had to write it this way, but the fact that this lifetime needs to be bubbled up so far up is really non-intuitive to me.

> If there are better ways to do this, I would be really happy to learn, though!

Me, too. :) I find myself limited by my way of thinking here, coming from C++ ("I _know_ it lives long enough, why don't you let me express this?").