You know, I tell my students, “Don't knock politicians. It's a hard job.” It's a thankless job, in many ways. Weekends and evenings are spent talking to people and doing stuff. It's hard, hard work.
That doesn't mean your vote is a reflection of all that hard, hard work. In fact, it's just sort of an expected part of the job. You may not know this, but it was really only in the 1970s, fairly recently, that Parliament gave the funds to MPs to actually set up local offices and do the kind of work that we seem to think now is a historical legacy. There's all kinds of evidence, really clear evidence, that you are not the centre of the voter's universe.