The Fatherhood Diaries by Plnty

It’s about time that we hear from the fathers out there, so:

Welcome to The Fatherhood Diaries by Plnty!

This first edition is by Zubair Timol, father of a three year old daughter and passionately obsessed runner (part time), while traveling (nearly full time) as a global exec in tech from A to B to C and back to Dubai.

Read on, he knows a thing or two about the beautiful battlefield called parenting!

PS: None of the many Dad’s I know are safe — so expect a message from me to feature in The Fatherhood Diaries soon!

For context, I’m married to a rather wonderful, patient woman, based in Dubai with a three year old daughter, traveling frequently, sleeping less frequently and slightly addicted to avocados and french fries (I mean who isn’t?).

Each day, I rise in the early hours to either run a long distance or tend to my daughter (both are character forming) and I’m learning how to become a

better

father

everyday.

Let us be honest about something. Parenting is a beautiful and entirely unpredictable battlefield. We wake up every single morning, put our armor on, and prepare to negotiate complex peace treaties before the sun even thinks about rising.

You try your absolute best to maintain an aura of sophisticated calm. You step out for the day, catching a glimpse of yourself. You are wearing Bottega Veneta, feeling like a composed global exec, ready to conquer the world. Then, out of nowhere, you are deploying evasive maneuvers to dodge a flying snack. Suddenly, that pristine woven leather is collateral damage in the morning skirmish.

You just have to look at the mess, take a deep breath, and laugh.

People often ask me how I manage the grueling distance of ultra marathons. They want to know the secret to running thirty five kilometers or more without giving up. I tell them the absolute truth. Once you have survived a full scale negotiation with a child in the middle of a busy public space (we had an episode in Loewe at Dubai Mall, it’s a story for another day), running through the heat for hours feels like a gentle holiday.

My endurance was not exclusively built on the track. It is forged at bedtime, when you are haggling over just “five more minutes” at story time. The discipline required to cross a marathon finish line is the exact same energy you need to handle a weekly schedule packed with activities.

You hit a wall, you dig deep, and you keep moving forward.

I watch my daughter grow every day, and we constantly realize we are not just raising a child. We are training a resilient human being. When we got her involved in jiu jitsu, the ultimate goal was building character and undeniable grit. It is about leaning into hard things and learning how to recover. However, I must admit, I now have to make sure my own takedown defense is absolutely solid before I dare ask her to organize her Hello Kitty collection…

To all the parents out there currently deep in the trenches, I want you to hear this. The chaos is the magic of it. The endless logistics, the ruined outfits, and the exhaustion are all part of a beautiful legacy we are building for our kids.

It takes an elite level of high performance to be a present and loving parent in the modern world.

Treat every single challenge as just another mile marker on the longest and most rewarding run of your life. And that’s a statistic that Strava will never be able to track!

Continue reading here:

The Other Club

·

Feb 23

The Other Club is a space for the stories that sit alongside motherhood: The women who haven’t had kids (yet, or ever), the ones still deciding, and the ones building full lives in other ways.