Does the world need another writer? Another artist? Another struggling poet? Does the world need me? These are the kind of redundant questions I'm asking now, whilst in my frustration at relentless job searching, writing application after application, and getting nowhere. 'Do I want this job anyway?' I keep asking myself. 'Or should I not just disappear off abroad and find work on a barge/kibbutz/refugee camp?'

It has dawned on me that it is almost impossible not to be overtly self-aware in England. Everywhere I look I'm being encouraged to strive - to strive for beauty, thinness, fun, friends, the job of my dreams, the holiday of my dreams, the boyfriend of my dreams etc. etc.

Watching Channel 4 news coverage last night of the earthquake in Haiti is numbing. How do we take this information in? The fact that possibly 100,000 people have been killed. The fact that no aid is getting there quick enough, and the fact that the Americans are already discussing this as an opportunity to improve their waning status on the world stage. The late Harold Pinter, in his Nobel Prize speech, spoke big words: words such as 'conscience' and 'social morality'. He said we had forgotten the need to support one another. But who is in charge to ensure that this need is met?

And in the midst of all this I put the washing out on the radiators and mop the kitchen floor and listen to Florence and the Machine playing on Xfm. How can you relate from worlds apart? How can I feel more useful? That is a selfish question, surely.