My dad did not do things with the family and I always said that I would not be like that with mine. He did not drink, smoke or whore hop so that was not his excuse. He hunted and fished in his spare time and that did not include us. I have looked down on him all of my life because of us not having family time
I'm sorry to hear that. I wish it were different for you.
I am the oldest of 4, and we didn't have a lot of money. We never went hungry, but that's mostly because my Dad worked his ass off. Two jobs, a lot of the time, and then he put himself through night school to become a cop at age 39. He worked a lot, my whole life, until he retired. He took us hunting and fishing as often as he could, sometime camping, and tried to support us with our sports games and such, but I personally missed a lot of time with him when I was a kid, because of his work. Some of it was necessity, some of it was his work ethic, so at least I know where I get it from. Luckily for my younger siblings, they got more time with him after he retired from the PD and all.
I never resented him for it, but I didnt always understand. When my son was born, I didn't see him very much for the first 11 months of his life due to 80-90 hours of shift work per week getting the aircraft carrier out of the refueling overhaul, and it made me think a lot about the sacrifices that my dad made growing up. This was the same time period that my dad was sick before he finally passed, the same time period I decided to change my career. I basically realized that my dad missed a lot of the beginning of my life, I missed a lot of the end of his life, and I was at risk of missing the beginning of my childrens' lives, all due to work. So, I made a change.
I still have some long days and weeks, and until I get in the groove with the boss gone now, they'll probably get longer for a while. But I intend to drive my time at work back down to a manageable level. At least I don't have any more overnights on duty on the ship, and no more deployments, but I don't intend to let my hours creep back up either. (Although, I can already see that this job is going to require working from home for emergent issues, too, which pisses me off to no end.)
So, we'll see how it goes. Work, family time at home with the kids, solo time with the wife, household chores and honey-dos...There's never enough time. I learned that lesson as a small-business owner, and I'm learning it again. Time is the single greatest commodity we are given. You can never recover it, correct the misuse of it, or make more of it.