Man - on being a man

I am learning more every day about being a father and still am working daily at my marriage but recently, I noticed a part of me that had slipped away. I was off work for the day and my wife and daughter had an appointment which lasted about 4 hours. All of the housework was done and my honey-do list only had a few items on it that I was ignoring :-).

I found myself sitting and wondering what I used to do for fun and I realized that whenever the dad and husband hats were removed, I honestly had no idea what to do. I realized I had lost track of what it meant to just be a man.

When I thought about what I do that doesn’t fall under the other two categories, I came up with a pretty depressing list: taking out the trash, mowing the lawn and reaching things on high shelves. And that last one could arguably be a husband or dad duty depending on what I’m reaching for.

When it all came down to it, I didn’t know how to make myself happy without my wife or child. While being happy with your family is extremely important, I believe that you can’t provide other people what you don’t already have. I want my daughter to grow up and be a happy person who wants to share that with a man as opposed to desperately looking for a man to make her happy.

I’ve never really been the car fixing, punching each other on the arm type of guy anyway so I knew I needed to find who I wanted to be and make a plan to get from here to there. So who do I want to be? I would look up to a man that has the following qualities:
- Has opinions and isn’t afraid to disagree with the group
- Is 100% faithful to his wife and children (no problem here)
- Loves his family dearly but can function without them too
- Has a hobby or something that he truly enjoys
- Not afraid to say “I don’t know what the heck your talking about” and learn about things
- Has friends

After talking with my wife, I have decided to make the following changes to my life. Only these two to start with and we will see how they go.

Start having a dad’s night out every other week - I know some dad’s from when my kid plays soccer and all of them were extremely excited about this idea. We even had our first one already and it was awesome (more on that on another day).

Learn guitar - My grandfather, mother and other relatives can play guitar and I have always wanted to learn. I bought guitars for dummies and have started messing around. I even bought a little pink guitar so me and my kid can practice together. It is important to me that this journey improves ME without taking away from them.

Lets see how these two changes go and what effect they have. I am sure I will have to make some adjustments but its a start.