My wife and I went to Hawaii two weeks ago for our first vacation without the kids in 14 years. We had a great time snorkeling, sailing, shopping, eating, laying in the sun, and just plain relaxing. The only other time we've done something like this was on our honeymoon.

Towards the end of our trip I started journaling about all the things I wanted to improve upon when we returned. My list included a lot of the usual types of resolutions: workout every day, tackle several household projects that have been on my wife's honey-do list for years, take my kids out on daddy-dates, cook dinner once a week, spend more quality time with my wife, etc, etc.

These are all good things, but here I am a week away from our return to reality. I have not even stepped through the door of the gym, let alone planned a daddy-date or even flipped through a cooking magazine to find a recipe.

My great intentions met what I'll call The Gravity Factor full force Monday morning of last week. We got home from the airport late Sunday night and didn't get to bed until 2 in the morning, and then I had to get up for work 4 hours later and start the daily grind. It was a pressure-cooker week getting ready for a 2-day training seminar that I was teaching, that started on Tuesday, followed by preparation to teach the same training to a group of 20 partners in San Francisco this week (leaving tomorrow).

I ended up putting in close to 60 hours last week, and it wasn't until Saturday that I was finally able to spend any time with my family. Looking forward to the chance to finally start in on my goals and resolutions, I started the day by raking the lawn and then took the family out for breakfast (actually my daughter asked me if I'd take her out for breakfast and I suggested we bring the whole gang).

We got back and my wife decided I needed a firm reminder that the garage was still a mess, and wondered out loud (with a frustrated tone) if it would ever get it cleaned up (background: I've needed to do this for over 2 years, and so her frustration was warranted - but her timing sucked. It was extremely deflating for me to hear that right then, after the rough week at work, and after I was just starting to try and tackle my Super Daddy goals that I had been wanting to get to all week).

This is what I mean about The Gravity Factor.

We want to be better dads and do right by our families, and keep everything balanced. But it seems like whenever we so much as start to tackle our goals, we're hit head-on by a heavy workload, or our cars suddenly decide to break down, or the washing machine decides to start leaking, or our wives decide it's the perfect time to remind us of our history of failure, which completely knocks the wind out of us and makes us wonder whether it's even worth trying to improve (that may not be their intentions, but that's what it ends up feeling like on our end... well, mine anyway).

Can you relate?

I'm not going to give up, but this struggle is getting old. I also realized this time around that there are too many things I need to improve on, and that I just flat out don't have the ability to achieve them all. I may never be the kind of dad I want to be, or that my wife wants me to be.

Maybe that's the first step: realizing that you just can't do it all.