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Join date: Aug 19, 2026
About
I'm Mark. My kids call me Dad, and that's the only title I've ever really wanted.
I live in North Texas with my wife and our two boys. I lost my own dad to cancer a little over ten years before I started writing here, and he was the best dad I could have asked for. He set a standard I'm still chasing.
I launched The Best Dads on Father's Day, June 16, 2019. I'm not a therapist, a doctor or a parenting expert. I'm a dad who has made plenty of mistakes and picked up a few things worth passing on.
The goal then is the same as it is now: help one dad a day navigate this journey a bit more smoothly.
Posts (72)
Oct 6, 2026 ∙ 7 min
Family Thanksgiving traditions worth keeping
Six years ago, I wrote a Thanksgiving post on this blog that was exactly two sentences long. It called 2020 a "difficult, challenging but eye-opening" year and said that if you stepped back, you'd find plenty to be thankful for. I stand by every word. But two sentences don't help much when you've got a house full of relatives and a turkey that's still frozen on Wednesday night. My boys are grown now, or close to it, so I've had a lot of Novembers to see which family Thanksgiving traditions...
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Sep 29, 2026 ∙ 9 min
Nine months of a job search: honest notes from one dad to another
I started looking last December. It is September now. That puts me about nine months in. A recruiter told me at the start it would take six to nine months. I remember thinking that number sounded insane. It was not insane. It was accurate. I am writing this the way I would say it to a friend across a lunch table, because I have had that lunch a few times now, usually with another dad who just got the news that his role was eliminated and is trying to figure out where the floor is. If that is...
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Sep 25, 2026 ∙ 9 min
Best camera for family photos (from a dad who got it wrong first)
Some links in this post are Amazon affiliate links. If you buy through one, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend gear I would tell a friend to buy. The best camera for family photos is the one you will actually carry out the door. That is the whole thing. It took me two years and one expensive mistake to work that out. I am not a photographer. I am a dad with a full week and kids who do not hold still for anything. What I wanted was something that could catch a...
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Mark Szkudlarek
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Dad of two. Writing here since 2019.
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