You are not losing your lifetime, you are building the future. If other people do not want to be on board it is a loss. I have spent years trying to teach people how to build their own websites and get away from the large walled gardens. Many will not come on board, but the community that does do it have built truly wonderful things. I think of the Neal Stepehson article "In the Beginning was the Command Line" where he compares Microsloths Family Sedan to the Free Tanks of Linux; there are all these Linux geeks yelling "come over here, we have free tanks" yet most people pay for the Family Sedan.

It sucks, yet I drive a Free Tank, and now help people online take care of theirs. The other day I was talking with one from the future generation about what type of computer they would want and they said "A Fedora gaming desktop". And that made it all alright :)