Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice

What are you most looking forward to this weekend?

Right now, I'm looking forward to the weekend being over; I'm staying with my folks until Tuesday, and I'm getting pretty homesick.

Actually, that's a little uncharitable. Here in the UK, Monday is a bank holiday, and most people -- including my stepdad -- will be off work, so it'll be nice to spend a little extra time with him. Unfortunately it looks like most of my other plans for the weekend have fallen through, but with luck I'll still be seeing a friend on Monday.

I think my first response was perhaps accurate though. What I'm *most* looking forward to is getting back home, and that's not going to happen until the long weekend is past.

What most excites you about the way you're living your life right now?

This is a pretty interesting question, but quite hard to answer. I've never had a whole lot of self-confidence or been hugely thrilled with my life, but I think the best thing lately is the sense of being connected. It probably makes me a massive geek, but I like the fact that I can get in touch with folks in so many ways, write microblogs on the move, share what I'm reading and listening to easily, and so on. It doesn't just apply online, though I'm almost certainly more socially active online than IRL; seeing folks I know, going places, all contributes to a sense of interconnectedness and and actually *doing* something.

My creative side is hugely important to me too, and I'm getting back into my old interests of photography and video once again. I'm still distributing all my work as Creative Commons, and I think that in itself is important. After a fashion, I feel like I'm practicing Buddhist principles (generosity, the idea of interconnection, and so on) in a 21st-century way, which is important to my sense of well-being and I feel I can make some spiritual progress at the same time as keeping up with the modern way of life.

Whose house (besides your own) were you in last and why?

It's not a hugely exciting story to relate, but the most recent place I've been -- I'm still here, in fact -- is my mum and stepdad's house. I usually come up here about every six weeks orso, and stay a while; I'm not due to go back home until Tuesday, now, and I've already been here nearly 2 weeks.

I like it here, but it feels a bit isolated; it's nowhere near as easy to get places as it is back home. On the plus side, though, I don't have to worry about food, drink, or heating; everything's tended to. Also, I have a few friends up here that I don't usually get to see at home, so it's nice to spend time with them when the opportunity arises. With a bit of luck I'll be seeing more folks before I leave, as a plan to meet up with a bunch of people I know at a pub at the weekend didn't really work out too well, for various reasons.

What have you lost that you wish you still had?
Submitted by gunderson bee.

I was originally going to answer this in a more abstract way, as I'd been talking to a friend lately about how we'd kind of lost the rose-tinted glasses we had when we first got online in the social groups we hang around with. More specifically though, I think I'd say I wish I hadn't lost a particular ring I had.

Some years ago, when I was with Matt, I bought a pair of similar (same design, different colours) rings for us. Unfortunately, his broke after we split up, and I guess he doesn't have it any more. Mine remained intact but got lost somewhere, and I've not been able to find it again.

At least I still get on with Matt, despite it being years since we were together -- and, now I think about it, quite some time since I saw him in person. Maybe I'll rectify that at some point; there's other friends in that area that I'd like to see too.

Other than TeamVox, who was the first person you added to your Vox neighborhood? What made you want to be their neighbor?
Submitted by TheFiercestCalm.

I think it was probably Mark, who I've known for a while; I don't want to seem sycophantic but (among other things) he always seems to be the first to know about Cool Internet Stuff(tm), so it's through him that I've heard about a lot of neat things.

I don't really know all that many people on Vox, but the QotD and Vox Hunt things are good ways to keep me writing, for times when I don't want to write about more general events in my life. To an extent I think it's given me a bit more confidence in my writing.

Show us a tattoo.

Rime_tattoo

This is on my left arm; apologies for the poor quality of the picture, but it's taken with a cheap webcam as that was all I had to hand. (I would have taken a picture of the one on the back of my neck -- the kanji for 'wolf' -- as well, but that was logistically impossible to do by myself, even with the webcam in preview mode.) Anyway, this is Tibetan script for 'Rimé', a non-sectarian movement within Buddhism that is very much philosophically appealing to me. I'm planning to get at least two more done in the foreseeable future, so they may get posted here too.

How do you think having siblings (or not having siblings) affects who you are as a person?

This is a tough question, but an interesting one. I'm an only child, so it's difficult for me to imagine what it would be like to have brothers or sisters -- and I'm never going to have one, given the age of my biological parents and the fact that they're both sterilised. On the one hand, I think I'd have a good bond with a sibling, meaning I'd have someone to rely on especially in times of loneliness, but on the other, I wouldn't want anyone else to have gone through my parents' messy divorce and all the arguments that preceded it.

In recent times I've had to unlearn expecting things to go my way, and getting rid of the sense of privilege that comes from being an only child. That being said, my parents (well, moreso my mother and stepfather) are very good to me, and I'm immensely grateful for that.

Show us something that's got you hooked.

Right now, that's got to be between one of two games.

FFXII: Revenant Wings arrived today, and though I've only completed the first chapter, I'm already hooked on it. Some of the best graphics on the DS, coupled with a continuation of the story of my favourite Final Fantasy to date and sharp, well-balanced RTS gameplay make this a candidate for one of the best games ever released for the DS, and as important to the series as Final Fantasy Tactics was nearly a decade ago.

Mass Effect arrived sometime last year, not long after release; unfortunately the day I started to play it, my 360 died. With that being repaired, I was fortunately able to use my hard drive on a friend's 360 and played the game quite extensively, completing the main storyline. As soon as I'd finished, I started again with a different character, and I'm enjoying it even more this time around. There's so much to the game, much more than I'd initially realised, and as my current character, I've barely touched the main storyline -- yet my playtime is already nearly equal to that of my first character. There's so much to it that it has to be one of the classic RPG's -- and the first part of a trilogy, to boot -- and while it's a little short of being a sci-fi Morrowind, it at least manages to be a fairly close approximation of playing an interactive Peter F. Hamilton book. And that's pretty damn impressive.

Share a song you recently realized you can't get enough of... no matter how many times you listen to it.

What do you do when you find yourself with nothing to do?
Submitted by Cassie.

Smartass reply: answer the question of the day on Vox.

Seriously though, that's not far off. Usually if I have nothing to do (or, perhaps more accurately, nothing I want to do), I go online. I can usually find something to pass the time, at least until I work out something else to do. Occasionally -- and unfortunately -- this sometimes means I end up buying stuff (damn you, one-click ordering) that I probably shouldn't, because I'm a sucker for shiny things, but more often than not I just end up blogging. Well, that or wasting time on IRC.