Sean Dietrich

You’re a farmer in the middle ages. We’re talking 1000 A.D.-ish. Actually, they don’t call you a farmer but a “yeoman,” which is an antiquated way of saying, “you shovel excrement for a living.”  Maybe you live in Scotland. Maybe France. England, Portugal, Africa, wherever. https://t.co/UPmle1w8jZ

I haven’t always been a morning person. God knows. When I was a young man I was anti-morning people. Morning people were insane. My mother was a morning person.  As a boy, I’d awake to find my mother already in the living room, snuggled beneath a lamp, where she’d been reading https://t.co/Kq5Q0w22Mh

Wake up early. Saturday morning. Leap out of bed. Oh, the bliss.  You sprint to the television set, racing your sister. Last one’s a rotten egg.  You are still wearing Superman pajamas. Beneath your Man-of-Steel PJs, you’re wearing Batman skivvies, which is a slight conflict https://t.co/ALXIyAG9BS

Q: Sean, what your views are on politics, so we know where you stand? A: My thoughts are, there is nothing more terrifying than waking up and realizing that your high-school class is now running the world. Q:  Sean, who are your literary heroes?  A: Gary Larson.   Q: Do you https://t.co/tMBhhqEhpH

Today is a big deal.  If you don’t read any further, just keep repeating the above sentence in a loud, clear voice until it sinks in and your spouse wonders whether you’re clinically insane.  Because you’d be insane NOT to realize what a big deal today is.  Today is a massive https://t.co/dbjRA45Hse

Five years ago I was in Huntsville when the world shut down. Five years. Almost to the day. I’ll never forget it.  I remember what life was like at the time. I had spent the previous year working on a book. A memoir about my dad’s suicide. I put a lot of myself into that https://t.co/Wt62SmMB3l

I remember my first cellphone. I felt like one bad hombre. I was in my mid-20s. The cellphone retail salesperson outfitted me with a state-of-the-age phone about the size of a residential General Electric refrigerator.  And, boom, just like that, I was Billy the Buttkicker. https://t.co/ppjAW3cZ1v

The young woman sits in my truck passenger seat. She is 19. Her hair is red. Scottish red. Luminously red. People always comment on her hair first.  Today she attended a presentation I gave at the library. Everyone at the library asked about her. They noticed her red hair and https://t.co/oAUGA7ZW0Y

She shall remain anonymous. Her classroom was out of control. Had been for a while. The kids in her “at-risk” fourth-grade class were about as organized as a prison riot.  That’s what we call them in today’s world. “At-risk youth.” Once upon a time, in a less modern era, we https://t.co/bPthqDDnqX

I have been doing a lot of walking. More walking than I’ve ever done in my life. More walking than I thought possible.  We wake up; we start walking. We go to bed; I’m walking in my dreams. My feet are so used to endless stepping that my feet subconsciously move while I use the https://t.co/JneXHEjz5q

I have here a letter from 19-year-old Erin, who lives in Bristol, Virginia. “Dear Sean,” she begins, “I want to be happy, but I’m not… “My family is stressing me out, big-time. Especially my mom. My therapist actually recommended that I write to you, seeing if you have any https://t.co/m5p7g59ILx

Maryland. The old cafe is mostly empty this time of night. Music plays overhead. Pedal steel guitar. The cook is cleaning his flattop. The waitress is reading a magazine. Thank God magazines still exist in our AI Age.  I smell cured pork and onions. There are globe lamps https://t.co/EhjIw8flqJ