The Most Important Job Title You Will Ever Have

I will be honest, I have a stupidly ridiculous job title! I actually don’t even write my full job title on my internal emails at work because it’d take up so much space people might think it was a paragraph. My job title also doesn’t really reflect the reality of what I do, which potentially makes it entirely useless (One hopes this is not the opinion my boss has of me as an employee, never mind the job title.)

The idea of a job title is to explain what you do in your employment. Well, I think that is what its supposed to be but sometimes I think it might just be to make me feel a little more important than I am.

I once worked in a job where they changed our job title, made it sound much more impressive, but the job itself never actually changed. One Friday I left as one job title and arrived on the Monday to a new one. But nothing actually changed about my day to day tasks and my motivation or self worth was definitely not impacted by what they called me. (And to be honest, till the day I left, we still called ourselves the older job title, so the branding exercise never exactly worked.)

I have some other titles in my life though, and these tend to be more important.
I am a friend
I am a brother
I am a son
I am a husband
I am a father!

I read a blog post this week by Mitch Teemley on his blog “The Power Of Story” where he told the story of challenging a young man that he wasn’t father to his multiple children if he didn’t support them.
See Post Here

This is a brave and a provocative statement. I wonder how many of us really think about being a father as a job? A job title? A role?

Second to that, I wonder how many of us take more pride in our employment job titles than we do in the title of father?

I have to be honest here, there have been many times over the past month when I have been sat at my desk in the evening, considering going home, but feeling the pressure of the work I needed to get done. Sadly, in that moment, the pressure of a beautiful and mouthy little 1 year old and a loving wife (the mouthy one is the 1 year old, the wife will slap me if I don’t clarify! The 1 year old will try and poke my eyes out whatever I say, it’s her thing!) waiting at home for me. In that moment, my priorities were shown to be what they are. Am I a father first or a (insert long self important job title here) first?

Being Daddy is not a 9 to 5 job. It also pays appallingly! It has challenges worse than any boss I have ever worked for but at the same time has provided more joy than finishing that wretched spreadsheet ever could. Y’see, scary as it might be at work I am an employee- at home I am:
* Daddy
* Dishwasher
* Role Model (Poor Child)
* Reader of stories about nut brown hare (don’t ask)
* Someone to cuddle
* Someone to affectionately stick your fingers up his nostrils
* The most important man in my daughters life.

Dads… remember when it feels difficult and it feels like everyone would be better off if you went to the pub, being daddy is the important job title you will ever have. You make more impact in those moments cuddling your child that you ever will on a spreadsheet.

Always and Forever Being Daddy!