Sean of the South visits Trussville: ‘Happy as I’ve ever been,’ author says

In an auditorium filled to capacity, a redheaded man with an old guitar captivated.

Feet tapped and heads bobbed as he plucked his way through “Mama Tried” and “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” The room shook with laughter at the man’s jokes about church potluck lines and growing up as a chubby boy wearing Sears Husky jeans.

In a dimly lit auditorium at the Trussville Public Library on Sept. 13, more light was not necessary. The redheaded man was the star.

This is Sean Dietrich, but it hasn’t always been this way.

“My life’s been sort of a hodge-podge of all sorts of failed enterprises that I’ve set out to do and not been very good at,” Dietrich said.

Then, he fell into writing blogs and gaining a social media following. He always wanted to write and felt as if he could.

“This is the first winning horse I’ve ever ridden, if you will,” he said. “I had this feeling that I could actually do it.”

Do it, he has. Dietrich, who has worked in construction, in a commercial kitchen and in church music groups, has posted approximately 1,600 blogs, chronicling everyday people and happenings in the South. He had planned to write only humor columns, but the simplicity and heartfelt words he typed connected with people.

“I never found a good reason to stop,” Dietrich said.

There aren’t any. His personal Facebook page is followed by more than 92,000 people, and his official Sean of the South page boasts 58,000 likes. Despite his blogs publishing each night at 11:27, they are shared hundreds of times within hours.

Why 11:27?

Dietrich always wanted to work for a newspaper.

“That was kind of my main dream,” he said.

Newspapers have deadlines. He knew if he didn’t impose deadlines on himself, he’d never get his stories written. Dietrich fell asleep one night while trying to stay awake until midnight. He awoke and hit “Post” on a blog at 11:27 p.m. The time has remained for each blog, sans maybe one due to poor reception at Lake Martin.

His growing popularity through his blogs, podcasts and musical talents led to a book deal. “Stars of Alabama,” a work of fiction, came out this summer. His memoir, “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” will be out later this year, he said.

“I realized there were things I had not dealt with,” Dietrich said of writing the memoir. “It was extraordinarily therapeutic. By the time I was done, I had been talking about things I had not talked about maybe ever. I’m a new man after writing it. That’s for sure. I’m not the same guy I was before. I wrote some things I’ve never written before that I might never write again.”

Another fictional book is due out next year. “I’m having fun writing books, that’s for sure,” he said. “Maybe too much fun to where I don’t have any time to breathe.”

Dietrich said he never imagined he’d be experiencing these highs in life.

“I don’t expect it to last very long either,” he said. “Right now I just feel like a dead pig in the sunshine. I am really having a good time in my life.”

When he’s at home along the Choctawhatchee Bay in Florida, he spends his days writing in a renovated Yellowstone camper on his property. When he and his wife, Jamie, are traveling from event to event, she drives while he writes in the passenger seat. With all the traveling, books and popularity, there must be future goals for Dietrich.

“To be honest, really nothing,” he said. “I’m about as happy as I’ve ever been. I’m feeling OK. I’ve hit some of the milestones that I’ve always wanted to, and I feel pretty good about the way things are. I guess I could die tomorrow and be happy. I don’t want to die tomorrow, but if I did I would not feel like I wasted my life.”