There’s a sign on Sean Dietrich’s refrigerator in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, that changes every day.
“It’s a countdown, and today it says 10,” he said Feb. 23.
That’s 10 days until Dietrich – the blogger/novelist/essayist/speaker/Alfa pitchman known as Sean of the South – and his wife, Jamie, make a big move. They’re moving from the Florida Panhandle, where the Sean of the South blog was born 10 years ago and from where Dietrich draws his inspiration, and moving to Birmingham.
“We’ve wanted to do this for a while,” he says. “We’ve been caring for Jamie’s mother for several years in different capacities, and when she passed away in August, that was one of the last things tying us here.”
Born in Missouri, Dietrich moved to Florida after his father died when he was about 11. “It’s really the only home I’ve ever known,” he says. “I’m a Panhandle guy. It has been my inspiration, too. We’re 30 or 40 miles from the Alabama line, and that has always been a conundrum. Are we Alabamians with Florida driver’s licenses or Floridians with Alabama accents?”
Dietrich didn’t start writing until he was an adult, after going back to school at Okaloosa-Walton Community College in Niceville.
“I started writing at the urging of teachers and my wife,” Dietrich says. “It has been the only winning horse I’ve ever ridden on.”
About 10 years ago, Dietrich started writing his own blog, Sean of the South, daily musings about Southern life that appear in newspapers around the region. He’s the author of 13 books, including a few novels and collections of the nearly 3,000 columns he’s written. He’s a popular speaker, and most recently was the TV pitchman for Alfa insurance.
“I was in town this week, and this lady asked me, ‘What do you do?’” Dietrich says. “My first answer was, ‘About what?’ Then I tried to describe this multi-headed monster that I’m a part of. I normally say that I’m a writer and a mediocre fisherman. I’m a full-time storyteller to some people, but that’s not a job description you hear about in high school. To call myself a writer is weird because I have no training, no pedigree. I don’t know what I do. I really don’t know.”
Though he didn’t write growing up, Dietrich did read a lot, using reading as an escape from a childhood that he says “was not so good.” Columnists were his favorites, including Lewis Grizzard, Erma Bombeck and Mike Royko.
Dietrich is also a musician, and that’s how he met Jamie, playing the piano for a Baptist church in Destin. She’s a Brewton native with a culinary degree and certification as a math teacher, and she and Sean have been together 18 years.
They’ll be moving to the Avondale area of Birmingham with their bloodhound, Thelma Lou, “alleged” Labrador, Otis Campbell, and two feral cats named Linus and Lulabell.
“We have a lot of family there and a lot of friends, too,” he says of the move. “Since the traveling started, it always seems to carry us to Birmingham. We found ourselves staying there for long periods of time, and we really fell in love with it.”
