Sean Dustin is the writer, producer, and host of the podcast "No Where To Go But Up".

In part 1 of this 2-part interview, Sean shares his wild story that begins with getting expelled from elementary school and ends with going to prison.

Show Notes

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No Where To Go But Up Podcast

Theme music by: Ruel Morales

Audio Transcript

Brian Schoenborn: [00:00:00 ] Hello. Hello everybody. A guest today. He had a time where he hit rock bottom like many of us, and he has turned that around and become a huge success story. We’re gonna learn about all of that and more, uh, is coming up.

We’ve got the host, creator and writer of the “No Where To Go But Up” podcasts with Sean Dustin. Give it up for my friend Sean Dustin. So what’s up man? How you doing?

Sean Dustin: [00:00:24 ] I’m doing well. You gave me a lot of credit. Uh, a little bit too much, cause, uh, I definitely don’t write a whole lot of anything

Brian Schoenborn: [00:00:32 ] in writing is, it’s proverbial, right? I mean, you know, I’d be, the way I see, I’m writing a book right now about my own story, right? But I actually record it. I’m actually making a podcast version of it first. So it’s more of a docudrama narrative kind of thing. And then I take that audio and I transcribe that, and then I turn that into book form. So I’ve actually got a book agent,

Sean Dustin: [00:00:52 ] uh,

Brian Schoenborn: [00:00:53 ] waiting for me as she’s collecting the chapters and we’re working on, you know, negotiating, uh,

Sean Dustin: [00:00:59 ] you

Brian Schoenborn: [00:00:59 ] know, distributor deals, publisher deals.

Sean Dustin: [00:01:01 ] Um, but I’m doing that basically by telling my story.

Brian Schoenborn: [00:01:04 ] So, I mean, I guess I’m a writer too,

Sean Dustin: [00:01:05 ] technically, but

Brian Schoenborn: [00:01:06 ] how much fucking writing am I actually doing? You know, it’s all coming out of my mouth.

Sean Dustin: [00:01:11 ] I don’t know.

Shoot, shoot, shoot me your agent’s contact because that’s the key. That’s the kind of book I need to write. And I got about three of them within my, within my story itself. Right. Um, there’s offshoots to all the different, like smaller subs. Set of stories that came from that crazy ass life. Nice.

Brian Schoenborn: [00:01:32 ] So, um,

Sean Dustin: [00:01:33 ] so

Brian Schoenborn: [00:01:33 ] really quick, I mean, you know, we’re, we’re recording live in quarantine as, as the rest of the world. I’m in LA.

Where, where are you Sean?

Sean Dustin: [00:01:42 ] I’m in California, Northern California. In the Bay area.

Oh, okay. Right on.

Brian Schoenborn: [00:01:46 ] Yeah. So we’ve got buried LA. We’re just making it work, guys. Fuck it. We’re gonna live. Um, anyways, uh, so maybe you could tell, tell the listeners a little bit about your story.

Sean Dustin: [00:01:58 ] Um,

Brian Schoenborn: [00:01:59 ] I want to hear about, I’ve been dying to hear about it.

I’ll share mine with you as well once we’re, once we get through, here’s a little bit.

Sean Dustin: [00:02:04 ] All right.

Yeah, I was trying to, I’ve been trying to refine my story down cause you know how it goes when you’re trying to tell it you and you haven’t written a written it down like as in like pieces and you just, it sort of goes everywhere.

You know what I mean? You jumped from here to here to here and you’re like, Oh damn, I forgot I was the best part. Um, yeah. So basically, man, I, I grew up a middle class neighborhood. I look like I’m Hispanic, but I sound like I’m white. So I grew up kind of different than everybody else. You know, there was a black family in my, in my neighborhood, and there was also a, uh, Filipino family next door.

And then my best friend was Portuguese, but I was probably the darkest, uh, aside from, from the, the black dude that was down the street. Right. And so I got teased all the time, man. Uh, and I was smaller and so I got picked on and bullied and all of that stuff. My parents ended up splitting when I was around five years old, my mom ended up having to put me into daycare and the only place that she could find was like one town over, cause she worked in San Francisco.

Uh, and so she had to commute every day. So I was there for a little while. Uh, I ended up getting expelled from preschool.

Brian Schoenborn: [00:03:19 ] How does that happen?

Sean Dustin: [00:03:23 ] That was a bad ass kid, man. I just,

yeah, so you want to know the story about how you got kicked out of preschool? So, I mean, I was. You know, always it just into shit. Right. And, uh, you know, whether it was playing house or doctor, you know, with the, with the little girls running around and just, just always getting into shit. Right. I guess somehow the elementary school that I went to was right behind the daycare, maybe about a quarter mile.

So I mean you can literally, you could see the school from the field, right? So you just walked through the field and go there and well kids will go back and forth from school cause there was neighborhoods over here. There’s neighborhoods over there. And so I don’t even know what the hell got into me. I don’t know why he did it, but there was.

Uh, to a little girl, a little boy walking by and for, and I just happened to, there was some dirt clods on the ground, right. And I just picked one up and I started throwing it at him, and I didn’t realize that there was a rocking in inside one of the dirt, the piece of dirt around it. Right? So it ended up hitting the girl right in her face, uh, right in your nose.

Right. And if it was, if it had been dirt, it would have been. It probably would have scratched her and burps it open, but instead it was a rock and it really fucked her up pretty good. So I got in trouble for that and got expelled from there. So I ended up having to go to the school that was down the street from my house.

Right. And that was within walking distance, maybe two miles. And I was, that was the third grade. Right. So for the third grade on, I was a latchkey kid. And that’s a horrible idea. Whoever came up with the idea of, of having a latchkey kid, that’s a horrible idea. Um, because kids need supervision. They need discipline, they need structure.

They need all of the things that being a latchkey kid does not have. The components are not there. Um. And so I basically had the run of