If you’re looking for me this week, and maybe next, I’ve gone dadding.
I thank the surgeon general – and Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, MD, MPH – for my quick shift.
I wasn’t planning on going dadding, at least not any more than I usually do.
I’m the guy who plans ahead – like way ahead, like drive my wife crazy, months in advance. So when I take time off – or have the onset of back-to-school overwhelm – I have lots of stuff in the queue, and The Company of Dads keeps cruising along. I’ve always been this way.
I also plan so that my work and Lead Dad responsibilities can co-exist and feed each other.
A few years ago, shortly after I gave up my column at The New York Times and started The Company of Dads, I was invited on the Stephens’ This Is Capitalism podcast. In answer to a question about what might hold back our growth, I said, “You can’t start something called The Company of Dads, put yourself out there as the Leadiest Lead Dad in America and then be a rank hypocrite and neglect your family!”
I’ve stuck to that. I’ve also carved out many moments early in the morning, late at night, or on weekends when my kids and wife were doing other things to get everything done. Solitary train ride into the city? Amazing time to catch up on emails!
It’s been working as a mission and a business, and I’m grateful.
But this week, with a daughter entering high school, another returning to middle school and our youngest starting her second year at an amazing school that’s an hour round-trip drive from our house, I was stretched too thin.
Part of the problem was I had intended to take the month of August off, but good things kept popping up. There was one stressful thing too. I said yes to the good things, even though I said I would not. And I soldiered through the stressful thing. I didn’t disconnect.
This weekend, I was reading through Vivek Murthy’s report on parental stress. It made me think about the amazing Bright Horizons podcast we did with stress expert Dr Aditi Nerurkar and her idea of five resets to manage our lives better.
I was set to write about parental stress and carry on as if I was not stressed out myself.
But tonight my wife took me aside: You need a break. The girls need you. I’m super busy at work. It’s okay to take a week off.
I resisted. Of course I did!
But if I can’t go dadding as the Leadiest Lead Dad in America, how can I tell working fathers at companies big and small to go dadding and to go dadding loudly as a positive example to all parents?
So, off I go! See you in a week – or two!
