Learning to be on someone else's schedule

I’ve spent nearly my entire life as a “scheduler”. As a teenager, I had my notebooks with my schedule locked down. At the beginning of each school year, I’d plan things out and have a great planner so I stayed on top of everything.

As I got to college, that shifted to an Excel sheet where I planned my quarters/semesters ahead. It wasn’t perfect, but I knew what I needed to do weeks in advance and planned around it. That included my social calendar. Yes, it’s a bit embarrassing to write that but I’m a nerd at heart and I still have nightmares of missing a final or a class due to forgetting my schedule.

When I got to the workforce, my work calendar became my life calendar filled with both personal and work events. I meticulously plan my weeks every Sunday evening or Monday morning for the week ahead. This help my anxiety quite a bit and I have gotten even more anal about my calendar which includes making Sophia send me calendar invites.

My planning lifestyle has definitely helped in my first 3 weeks of fatherhood. But one area I’m struggling with is the fact that I’m no longer on my schedule. I can plan all I want, but my son dictates everything now.

Today, I had a great plan to get up early and take my son to get coffee prior to his 9am feeding. That went out the door when he decided not to sleep after 4am and didn’t go back to bed until after his 7am feeding.

I had a 1-3am block to grab lunch with Colin and go to the grocery store. I was going to be back by 3am to make his next feeding at home. Of course, that went out the door when he got fussy at the grocery store delaying everything and forcing us to feed him in a Walgreens parking lot.

Everything got shifted back and all of my sudden, my 4-6pm window to go to the gym was no longer. This all seems very minor of course and an excuse not to go to the gym in the rain can be a seen as a positive. But as a type A scheduler, this really threw me for a loop and stressed me out.

This is unfortunately my life now. I’m no longer scheduling for myself, but rather for my son. He takes priority. And his mom comes after that. I’m third in line at best in this equation. I suppose that’s what parenting is about - making sacrifices for your kids and putting them first.

It’s easy for me to say that I’d be happy to do it, but 3 weeks in and it’s proven harder than I thought. I know I’ll get used to it though and make the right adjustments. Soon enough, I’ll start having nightmares about missing my son’s events and not mine.