There are times when I feel I am the worst father ever to walk the face of this planet. Of course that is an exaggeration, but when it comes to my kids, I can't help thinking that way sometimes.

Since I was little I have always been a TV person. Day and night I would watch show after show after show. Sure, I went outside to play like most kids, but I always found time to get some TV viewing done. I grew up watching shows like "The Facts of Life", "Three's Company" and "Different Strokes". I also watched shows like "Knight Rider" and "The Dukes of Hazard". Thru out the years my TV shows and movie list grew but one thing that always stuck was all those ideas of " the perfect family" and the perfect lifestyle". Obviously as I grew up I learned that there was no such thing and perfect, but I believed there were things I saw that could be possible.

As a teen, I dreamed of having a family who would sit down to eat at the table every night together, who would wake up in the mornings and have breakfast together or somewhat together and everyone would be in a somewhat good mood and stuff. To have family members drop by any time and have a ball. But, I was never that lucky. My family eventually broke apart and family members rarely visited. Not exactly what I had hoped for.

I hoped to be able to apply this to my own family someday, but todays lifestyle and difficulties make this a much harder goal than I had anticipated. This is the reason I find myself wondering I am being a good father to my kids or am I being neglectful and selfish.

Here's the deal:

I work 8 hours a day, but my job takes at least 10 hours between the travel to and from, my lunch and the actual work. I don't really have a lunch hour since due to school schedules and lack of funds, I have to use my lunch time (which I take at 2:00 and by then am starving) to pick up the kids from school and drop them off at their after school care which leaves me with very little time to eat usually forcing me to answer calls with my mouth full (well sometimes, but rarely). Basically from the moment I wake to I go to sleep, I am dealing with either my job or my kids Monday thru Friday, with some help fro my wife. But as i have siad before, I also do a lot of home things which also take up my afternoon time. Thank God I don't have a backyard to mow.

But, this issue is no limited to weekdays. On Saturday my wife works, leaving me to take care of the kids all day and what ever else is not done around the house. By the time she gets home, i am too tired to wanna do anything and still I have the kids at home. Sunday is hardly any different except none of us work. But we are all home. The thing is I am not much of an outgoing person. I have very few friends, hardly any actually, and I usually go straight home from work so i don't hang out with anyone or do the "Happy Hour" thing. I'm pretty dull I guess you can say. Not to mentione that I don;t have much of a choice since I have to take my wife to the train station in the morning so she can go to work and then I drop off the kids at school then I have to pick up the kids from their after school care and then pick up my wife from the station again.

The truth is I don't have any "me" time. My wife has Thurdays off so she gets to stay home all by herself, enjoy the silence of an empty house. The only way i get that is when she decides to visit her mom and I convince her to take the kids with her (after a bit of fighting). But this is rare. Going out is not my thing so I wouldn't know where to go or what to do and besides that usually involves spending money I don't have.

Because of this I, sometimes, find myself hoping on to my computer and losing myself on the Internet or my PC games in the afternoons. Because I get so involved in it looking for some me time, I tend to ignore my kids and my wife and sometimes it makes me feel like I am not being a good father or husband. But I just can't seem to figure out how to balance this lifestyle. To make matters worse, I am in the process of looking for a part time job wich will only eat in to my family time even more but I need the extra money.

I'm just looking for some ideas, for justification that I deserver to have a least an hour or 2 to myself in the afternoons while I am gaming or browsing without feeling like I'm ignoring my family and my duties as a father or husband. I am wrong here? Any advise will be appreciated.