I'M TIRED. Chances are if you're a dad, you're tired too.

Last week, I was dead on my feet, having spent a month grinding away at a bunch of stories on movies and movie stars. It seemed that every day I had a new assignment. Every night another screening. Every weekend some silly thing to finish up.

Train. Movie. Train. Office. Train. Home. Sleep. Train. Office. Train. Movie. Train. Home. Sleep. You get the idea.

When you get to choose which movies you want to watch, it's leisure. When you have to watch back-to-back screenings of, say, Tooth Fairy and Universal Soldier: A New Beginning, believe me when I tell you it's work.

While I'm watching movies and hammering away at a computer all day, my wife is looking after the kids, unless of course she's also working, in which case the in-laws help out.

Every once in a while I'll get a phone call: 'Daddy, can we play Wii?'

Feeling guilty over my absence from their lives, I allow them to fill the void with videogames. Mario spends more time with them than I do.

It is wonderful for a man to work hard for a living. It gives a man a sense of great satisfaction to be able to provide for his family.

I am fully aware that once I leave this job, some other schmuck will fill my seat, and it will be as if I was never there. Remember this and remember it well: if you're not grinding, you are forgotten. Utterly.

As for my kids, well, I'm their father. At this point in their lives, I mean an awful lot to them, and they mean an awful lot to me.

When I'm not there, they feel it, and I feel it.

Maybe I should go into plumbing. Mario, he seems to have it all figured out.