7 Questions returns! This is a special one for me because I feel that I am Tyler, if I were a young, thin red-headed dude living in Chicago who loves musicals. I first really knew of Tyler when he blew the lid off some particularly juicy Tumblr gossip and he has failed to disappoint ever since. We’re going to switch gears just a bit and switch up the questions. For this one, I decided to go with my favorite Vanity Fair feature: the last page, where they ask a celebrity questions from the Proust Questionnaire. Here were his answers:

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?

I would like to constantly be surrounded by friends. In the last year I’ve had some crappy things happen to me, and the only constant have been my friends. I’ve found that I’m most likely to be down in the dumps when I’m on my own. I don’t like to think of myself as co-dependent, or having to rely on being in a relationship with someone, but I have always been the kind of person who really enjoys being surrounded by people I like. I think, perhaps, I make up for those years in high school, when my “friends” were mostly folks with whom the only common interest we shared was our proximity. It’s quite a relief when you get to college – and later, into the real world – to make connections with people based on something more substantial than having the same homeroom teacher.

2. If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?

I’m hoping it will be a red panda, because everyone would think I am cute and take pictures of me. And then Molly Lambert would finally love me.

3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

Generally, it’s my vanity. I have a compulsion to blog, to tell stories about myself, and to share my opinions with strangers. I don’t really do that in real life (well, not with strangers, anyway), but I don’t think most people who BLOG (ew) are so open with people they don’t know, either. I’d love to explore this idea and figure out WHY we, as a blogosphere (ew, ew) do this, but I’m pretty lazy (which is another thing I hate about myself), so the chances that I will write The Great American Blog Book are very, very slim.

I also hate my propensity to insert parenthetical asides, which is something I also do in real life. A friend told me recently, “All of your stories require so much exposition.” I blame the blogging.

4. What is the trait you most deplore in others?

I hate it when people eat on public transportation. Specifically, I hate the mysterious people who eat sunflower seeds on the CTA red line. WHO ARE THEY? I have never seen anyone eat seeds on the train, but I always see piles of the seed DROPPINGS on nearly every train car. I don’t think I’ve ever seen McDonald’s bag filled with an empty cardboard Big Mac box or a super-sized cup with the remnants of Dr. Pepper. I have never seen a Popeye’s tray containing the bones of a chicken. What is it about sunflower seeds that makes people feel like it’s appropriate to eat them on the train and then spit them out onto the floor? (This particularly blows my mind because I don’t think I have ever eaten sunflower seeds in my life, much less on mass transit.)

5. What or who is the greatest love of your life?

I suppose I could say that I’m in love with SOMETHING rather than SOMEONE, but, let’s face it: the only thing I could think of is “The Internet,” and I do not want to be that person.

I’ve certainly been in love with people, but my strategy for falling out of love with someone is to hate them. And hating someone is to reject the idea that you could love them in the first place. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s the wrong time to ask me this question, as the most recent person I was in love with is someone I now hate, and the others are so far away from my radar that I don’t really think about them all that much.

I suppose, though, that if I could pick one abstract thing that I was in love with, it would be my emotional maturity.

6. Who is your favorite hero of fiction?

This is a tough one to answer. I immediately think of which literary character I relate to the most, and I want to say Quentin Compson from Absalom, Absalom! and The Sound and the Fury. It’s a bummer of an answer because of the whole, you know, SUICIDE thing, but I understand his dichotomous, “She’s my sister! She’s my daughter! She’s my sister! She’s my daughter!” connection to The South.

In the same vein, and slightly less depressing, is Stingo from Sophie’s Choice. William Styron is my favorite author and it’s fitting that one of my favorite characters in fiction is his literary doppelganger. Stingo, it should be noted, is the only main character in the novel that doesn’t kill himself, so he’s got that going for him. He’s kind of a failed hero, which is maybe what I like about him. I not really attracted to people who actually accomplish shit.

7. What is your motto?

Last year when my life was going – and went – to shit, and I became incredibly angry at pretty much anyone who did as much as gave me a look I could interpret as flippant. After a while, when I had one of those “ONLY YOU CAN MAKE YOURSELF HAPPY” epiphanies that I get every few months, I decided that my motto was: “Fuck that guy!” It worked in nearly all scenarios. Did your boss call you from Germany to yell at you because he missed his flight back to the states? Fuck that guy! Is the dude you have a crush on being obnoxiously aloof and won’t give you a straight answer in response to your obvious feelings for him? Fuck that guy! Is your ex-boyfriend sending you his condolences after the death of a family member (by way of his co-worker whom you do not know very well)? Fuck that guy! Does your Internet connection keep failing when you’re trying to blog about your FEELINGS? Fuck that guy!

These days I’m trying to be more POSITIVE (I had one of the aforementioned epiphanies about a week ago), so I’m trying to come up with a new motto. In the meantime, I’m going to steal one from Troy Dyer, my favorite hipster philosopher: “The only thing you have to be at the age of twenty-[five] is yourself.”

Tyler’s writing can be found at This Recording and his Tumblr.