So I have already written several posts in which I have spoken about or alluded to my determination that fatherhood was not going to be an excuse for me to lessen my expectations for what I wanted to achieve with my own life. Whilst I especially wasn’t ready to give up on my goals to push myself further with endurance racing and accept the ‘Dadbod’ I’d been gleefully warned about, this belief also applied to every other aspect of life. In essence, I really didn’t want to accept any kind of reality that validated the premise that I had to give up something to be a father. Aside from the fact that this felt like a cop-out, I never wanted to my daughter to feel like she was responsible for any of my unfulfilled ambitions. With the benefit of hindsight, this was hopelessly naïve, if conceived of the best intentions. Almost every facet of my life has felt the impact of the arrival of this tiny piece of humanity, but I wouldn’t change it for the world. Time and energy are not infinite resources and raising a young child takes plenty of both, so obviously this will force some changes on a parent’s life. But that doesn’t necessitate giving up other things that are important in your life entirely. For the most part I just had to be a bit flexible.
So I haven’t had to give up my social life, but I have had to change when and how I catch up with people. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this has resulted in losing touch with some friends and becoming stronger friends with others, but this isn’t a process that is unique to parenthood. It happens throughout life as a result of changing lifestyles. I haven’t had to give up my fitness- I’m probably fitter than I have ever been- but I have had to find more flexible ways to get my training done, meaning a lot more early mornings and running alone. I do miss having company on some of my runs and sometimes I really hate my alarm clock, but overall the change has seemed minor. I haven’t sacrificed writing, but I do find it difficult to write when I am tired; and since I am tired a lot of the time, I have significantly reduced my output. I’m okay with that too. Writing has always been a hobby that I only do because I enjoy it. The moment it starts to feel like a chore I know I need to take a break anyway. Of course I didn’t have to change as much of my life as I did to accommodate fatherhood. If I really wanted to prioritise things differently, I could have tried to bend my family life around my training regime, my social life or anything else I thought was important. But I honestly can’t imagine doing that. Not if it means missing out on being an active and present father and husband during the magical early years of my daughter’s life. So I’ve made peace with the realisation that actually fatherhood does require me to makes some reasonably significant changes to my lifestyle and even give up a few things that were less important to me. But I wouldn’t change that. None of the things I have given up have come close to matching the joy I get from being a father.
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Dad thoughtsI haven’t had much chance to write much over the last couple of weeks. This has largely been to do with the birth of my daughter, which has had a profound impact on my life. As a corollary of this, a fair amount of my thoughts and observations may shift to the new topic of parenthood. I’m not planning on stealing from Sonia Kruger’s playbook and use the phrase, “as a parent,’ to make claims with no factual basis, but parenthood is a complex and fascinating area so I will be making a few comments about my experience of it. Archives
October 2020
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