...contemplate life and think, "Why?"

Do you ever do that thing where you get so into a film or a book or something that you get really disappointed when you remember that it's not real? I do that on an alarmingly regular basis, and it's beginning to worry me.

I'm not really in the mood for a massive rant today. I'm just feeling kind of meh. I have these huge dreams and plans for myself, I have a destination I'd do anything, literally anything to get to - and I'm no closer to finding out where the hell I'm supposed to start than I am to growing wings. The quickest route from point A to point B is a straight line, but what do you do when, like the Isla de Muerta in Pirates of the Caribbean, point A is impossible to find unless you already know where it is? How are you meant to locate the bloody thing?

In a nutshell: I know where I'm headed [hopefully] but my vessel hasn't come to take me there yet, and I'm beginning to freak out a little bit.

Going back to the first thing - I think fiction is both beneficial and poisonous. Good because it enables ordinary people [e.g, me] to escape life for a few short, sweet hours. Bad because, sooner or later, the story ends and said ordinary person is slapped in the face by the bitch that is the harsh reality of life, and I can attest to the fact that it hurts. I don't want to be reminded every time I turn on the tv that people are dying in pain and poverty the world over when my imagination can rose-tint everything for me, when I can convince myself that buying a Big Issue and turning lights off when I leave a room and getting a red nose for Comic Relief will actually make a difference.

Anyone who knows me will know that, as a rule, I prefer to work alone. I appreciate my privacy, I like my independence, I enjoy my own company from time to time - but what can one person do to change the world when it's just her with her thoughts to keep her awake at night, thinking of all the things that should be, but can't be, changed?

Bugger all

It makes my skin crawl, knowing that there's people in the world who need help, but for whatever reason can't get it. I want to heal the world, but what can I do? How can I hope to enter into the spider's web of manipulation and corruption that is world politics and sort it all out when I can't even work the stupid washing machine?

I was in Ipswich yesterday with Fran. We were walking to Primark, laden down with shopping bags from here and there, and we saw a man sitting in a doorway. Mid-twenties, maybe. Dark, relatively short hair. No possessions, from what we could see. I know you see people "like him" [and you have no idea how much I hate using that term] all the time, but this guy looked so... I don't know how to describe him. Broken, maybe. Anyway, Fran and I went through the motions I suppose everyone does - see him, keep walking, don't make eye contact, forget about him asap. We'd reached the end of the road when my conscience gave me a kick up the butt and I stopped, went back, and gave him a pound. He was watching me approaching and he kind of drew away from me, and he was shaking and I don't know what "happened" to him, but whatever it was, it was bad. When I put the money into his hand, he thanked me profusely. I smiled at him, said "God bless", and walked back to Fran.

A pound, a smile and a "God bless"? What fucking good will that do?

I wonder if he found some shelter from the rain that attacked Suffolk yesterday. Did he find somewhere to sleep? Do his family know where he is? Does he even have a family? Where is he now? What's going to happen to him? How long has he been living rough?

My brain keeps taunting me with the whole "should have done this" game, presenting to me various things I could have done that would have helped him more than I did. Talked with him for a while, maybe. Offered to get him a sandwich. Asked his name, turned him into a person as opposed to the ornament lining the streets of Ipswich I suppose he's become. Why the hell didn't I?

And what about his dreams? I have my dreams, my ambitions - I want to be a writer, I want to find someone who makes me happy to spend my life with, I want to be happy - and what does he dream of? What makes me more likely to have my dreams realised than him? Why is he there and I'm here? How can there be "privileged" schools like the one I attend when there are people like him wondering if this doorway is more secure than that doorway? It isn't fair

I have a policy I try to go by, which is, if I don't like something then I change it - but if it can't be changed, I change the way I think of it. This, this dream of taking the world and fixing it and making it a better place, is something I can't do. So what do I do now?

Quote of the day: Pick battles big enough to matter, but small enough to win. [Jonathan Kozol]