March 26, 2002 | 9:59 AM

So tonight I am seeing Angus for dinner.

Just dinner. No drinking. No hanging out �till dawn reminiscing. I�m giving myself two hours and then I will press the panic button. I will be home by 8PM to watch The Gilmore Girls with Jenn.

I am not really looking forward to hanging out with him.

I haven�t seen him in months and I feel like I�m seeing him tonight more out of obligation than anything else. I do care for him a great deal. But sometimes that�s not enough.

Maybe I�m too hard on people. But I don�t think so. I�ve been suicidally depressed. I�ve been without a home. I�ve been through mental illness and abortions and abuse. And by sheer force of will I turned my life around. I�m not saying this to pat myself on the back, but it�s hard for me to tolerate complacency in other people.

Angus is so fucking complacent and it just kills me. All of that intelligence and potential wasted. Don�t get me wrong�I am not one of those people who thinks everyone should have a safe well paying 9-5 job�far from it.

But if you say you want to be a screenwriter or a novelist, then fucking do it. Go all out. Take the risks necessary to make that dream come true. Don�t sit on your ass and drink 40�s every night, rehashing the same thirty pages over and over again, never submitting anything to anyone. And hey�if you don�t like Hollywood or you don�t want to deal with a publishing company, that�s understandable�I wouldn�t necessarily want to get into bed with a bunch of corporate suits either.

But if you feel that way and are as serious as you say you are about wanting to get your movie made/novel published, put your goddamned money where your mouth is and look for some independent financing or start your own company. Otherwise, you ain�t nothin� but a punk ass poser. It�s such a fucking cop out.

If you aren�t willing to do any of those things, then why waste your life working a ten dollar an hour job you hate, living with scary roommates in a mice infested hell hole, barreling towards chronic alcoholism with each fifth of whiskey you open and chug. Why not use the intelligence and talents you have to do something more interesting with yourself? Life does not have to be a zero sum game. If you�re dad is willing to help finance your education, and you�ve already got two years of college under your belt (and a 4.0 GPA to boot), why not go back to school. Especially if you have a serious interest in quantum mechanics.

Newsflash. Having a real job, especially a job in an area that can help humanity (i.e. science or education or law or non-profit community organizing) does not make you a sell out. There is a difference between selling your soul to make a fat paycheck doing something you hate, and working a grownup job that you may be interested in, and may actually benefit humanity. If you can�t see that, then you are caged in a perpetual adolescence. Grow the fuck up.

I wish for once that I could see you and hear how well everything is going. I wish I could see those green eyes on fire again. Where along the line Angus, did you lose yourself?

We have just one life as who we are. One chance to explore this identity. Why waste it being miserable? Why waste it hating and cowering in our sad little realities. If it�s all meaningless anyway then why not take risks, push ourselves to untold boundaries. As Willie Wonka says,

We are the music makers. We are the dreamers of dreams.

There is so much out there. If you just closed your eyes and took a leap of faith into the unknown, you would emerge a better person.

I don�t know. I don�t know.

It�s just dinner.

Fuck it.