Well. There's no turning back now.

What the hell am I doing?

Yesterday at the SDML Guitar Student recital, Dave McLean (founder, head instructor, and my personal mentor) announced that I will be leaving Kentucky at the end of June for a two-year mission to Chicago, with the goal of starting a new branch of the SDML Academy of Guitar.

Over the last 8 or 9 years, I've built a large and successful teaching program here in Lexington under Dave's guidance and using his model, with some modifications of my own. About six years ago, I walked away from my 10-year stint at a Fortune 500 company where I was making an absurd amount of money for being a non-college graduate. But I wanted to play music for a living, so I left.

So I've done "crazy" before.

But crazy, as you might imagine, comes with a whole host of wild complications. For one, there's a sense of isolation that I certainly didn't expect. I'm a pretty social creature, and while there are a lot of people involved in music around here, there are a scant few who actually do what I do. Abandoning a steady paycheck with medical benefits is a terrifying move and I don't blame anyone for avoiding that plunge.

For a guy like me who likes to be surrounded by lots of interesting people, it's tough when they all go off to work without me.

Crazy also comes with benefits, though, things that I now consider indispensable. Probably the greatest change from living in the corporate world to being self-employed is this: If it seems stupid, I don't have to do it. If it seems smart, I get to try it. I don't have to beg for relief from inanity or permission for wisdom. I could never live without that freedom again.

There's just so much to DO. Funding is the first and biggest issue to tackle, and I need to launch the Kickstarter campaign to try and cover the start-up costs of deposits, insurance, and rental of the teaching space for the group classes, supplies for students, advertising campaigns etc. etc. On top of that I have to keep my live performances moving, joining Mallory Lennon (http://www.reverbnation.com/mallorylennon) as her guitar player and learning her catalog, and finding places to do solo gigs when she's not available. And of course packing up things here and stripping down my already meager possessions to the absolute bare essentials... it's a lot of work and tough decisions.

What's so exciting about this Chicago mission is that I have absolutely no clue if it's a good idea or a bad idea. Weighing pros and cons on something of this magnitude can drive a man out of his mind, so I just try to stay high-level on my thoughts. At the end of the day, at the rate the network is expanding and with the power of what we do, this has to happen.

Once again, I'm walking away from something that is working quite well. I'm leaving family, friends, my home town, everything that is familiar to me, and pursuing something simply because I believe in it. Because I know it's the right thing for me. It seems like a good idea, so I'm gonna try it.

And it's just crazy enough to work.