Is trucking worth missing my kids' birthdays?

The pay is decent, but you have missed your kid's birthday two years running, and you are starting to ask what you are really doing all this for. That question deserves a real answer, not another year of driving past it. When the cost starts landing on your child, it is right to stop and look hard. Only you can weigh this, but weigh it honestly, with both sides on the scale. The money is real and it matters, it feeds and shelters the very family you are missing. But years do not come back, and a birthday missed is missed. This is not about guilt. It is about deciding, on purpose, what you want these years to hold. You may have more room than the schedule makes you feel. Are there routes closer to home, a role off the long haul, a way to trade some pay for more presence? And where you cannot be there, make the time you do have count, a call, a plan, a promise kept. Do not let another birthday pass by default. Choose it, one way or the other, with your eyes open.