On a serious note, all of you FIRST-aholics are going to catch alot of flack from "friends", family, and others for putting in all this time and effort. At some point, it will be enough to make you second guess yourself. You'll start thinking "perhaps I should have a more balanced life and do other things besides work and FIRST and other projects. Maybe with a "balanced life" I'll be satisfied and happy." My advice: Forget that non-sense! Just give in and go full bore! You know you're doing the right thing! And it's all worth it! You're helping yourself and everyone you contact by participating in FIRST projects and starting FIRST teams. If you try to go partway (part FIRST, part other stuff) you're only going to get mad at yourself later for slacking off when you finally decide you were right in the first place and go all out FIRST-crazy! Keep thinking, keep sketching, keep driving, keep building, keep testing, keep thinking, keep going! Figure out that shaft coupling, that drivetrain, that motor mount, that tracking mechanism! You're not going to change much as you get older, so you might as well get good at driving hard and following through on a plan 'cuz you're going to be doing it for a good chunk of your life (the rest of the time you'll be sleeping.... slacker!
So, make sure your friends are FIRST-aholics, convert your family, keep moving forward, and only look back when it's time to do an After Action Review to learn how to do it better the next time. People will follow you, you just have to be willing and able to lead them and this is the best thing going! FIRST is like life, if you can figure out how to do well at FIRST, you can figure out how to do well at life.
whew!
Besides, you'd just spend your time playing Quake or Starcraft anyway
-Joe