The Romance of Elsewhere: Welcome to My Tortured Mind

The angry sound of a trillion BBs is hitting the old metal roof of this Texas ranch house as a thunderburst opens up overhead, dumping a tsunami of water so vast it will flood all the nearby rivers in minutes. Here, the Texas Hill Country stretches in gentle waves of limestone and cedar, vineyards catching early light like strings of jewels draped across the landscape. A hawk circles overhead, its cry echoing off the hills as it navigates thunderheads the size of skyscrapers. Last weekend’s drive through these rolling hills still lingers — the old farmhouses weathered by decades of sun, the way light plays across the land at golden hour. It’s not Tuscany, but maybe that’s exactly the point.

Italy’s Siren Song

Three weeks since returning, and Italy still inhabits my bloodstream like a fever I can’t break. Florence calls with the voice of every Renaissance master who ever mixed pigment on a worn wooden palette — and I can’t get it out of my head.

My right brain — the creative me, the dreamer, the one who loses hours drowning in a single Caravaggio — refuses to let go. I can still smell the turpentine of ancient studios, hear the scratch of charcoal on paper from my lesson at Studio Ten, see afternoon light pouring through magnificent windows onto marble floors worn smooth by centuries of artistic pilgrims.

The Florence Academy of Art represents everything my creative soul is starving for: three years of intensive training, daily immersion in techniques refined over generations, the simple luxury of showing up each morning with nothing on my mind but becoming better. Not managing. Not building. Just becoming.

The Texas Chains

Texas holds me with different chains entirely — golden ones, perhaps, but chains nonetheless. My left brain — practical, responsible, annoyingly logical — keeps running the numbers. The empire I’ve built over decades sits here, rooted in this soil like those ancient live oaks that refuse to be moved. Employees depend on me. Millions trust and rely on me showing up.

More than that, my work transforms lives. I don’t just teach painting techniques; I help people discover who they might become. I help them live their dreams and find their tribe. It’s not merely a living — it’s a legacy. How do you abandon something that gives others the very transformation you’re desperately seeking for yourself?

The Ghost of What Might Have Been

Memory is a particular kind of torturer. Fifteen years ago, after selling our San Francisco-area house, I floated the idea to my wife: What if we raised the kids in Italy? What if I spent three or four years at the Academy while they grew up speaking Italian, eating real gelato, and understanding that the world extends beyond the American suburbs? She seemed on board. The kids would have thrived. I was ready. She was warming to the idea.

Then Pooter the dog got cancer, and everything derailed. Life got complicated. We moved to Austin on a whim, the kids got established in schools and friendships, and leaving would have been disruptive. Then somehow 15 years evaporated like morning mist burning off the hills, and that window slammed shut while I wasn’t watching.

Now I kick myself with the particular venom reserved for roads not taken. Fifteen years. Gone. If I wait another 15…

When Dreams Collide

Two dreams collide in my chest like continental plates grinding against each other, creating earthquakes in my soul. Can both exist? The romantic in me wants to believe in miracles of time management: Wake at 4 a.m. to work for a couple of hours and do meetings, head to school at 8, study art in Florence all day until 7, work the business and homework until midnight, sleep five hours, repeat. The realist knows that sounds less like ambition and more like a scheduled breakdown. Would I last a semester? A year? Would exhaustion destroy both dreams instead of fulfilling either?

The Mathematics of Impact

Multiplication matters more than any single painting I might ever create. That’s what the practical voice whispers when I’m brutally honest. If I stay here, keep building — I can touch exponentially more lives. Train millions more artists. One person studying in Florence is addition. Training others to teach and transform? That’s multiplication. But does that math mean my own dreams have to die on the altar of service?

I recall Richard Schmid telling me of his dilemma. “I could be a brilliant artist or a brilliant concert pianist. I wanted to be both, but I knew I could only do one well.”

The Retirement Lie

Some cheerfully suggest retirement as the solution, as if I’m suddenly going to transform into someone who retires, quits working, and heads to Florence with my RV. That’s not happening. I’ve seen what happens to driven people who stop driving — they park permanently. It’s like putting regular gas in a body that runs on jet fuel. 

The Betrayal of Romance

What if Florence is a fantasy I’ve polished so bright it bears no resemblance to reality? What if I get there and discover three years of intensive training doesn’t deliver the transformation I’ve imagined? Or worse — what if it does, and then I face an entirely new conflict: abandon my carefully built business to pursue this newfound artistic mastery, or try to merge them, creating yet another impossible balancing act?

The Distance Between Dreams

An Italian family visiting Texas might feel exactly what I feel walking through Florence. The romance isn’t in the place — it’s in the distance from our daily lives and the difference from what our day-to-day surroundings look like. They might stand in my Hill Country at sunset and think, “This is what I’ve been missing. This simplicity. This space. These wide-open skies.” Meanwhile, I’m longing for their narrow cobblestone streets and Renaissance light.

We always want what we don’t have. But sometimes, just sometimes, that wanting is telling us something true.

The False Binary

Experts would say I’m manufacturing a false choice. That I’m creating binary thinking as a defense mechanism — it’s easier to say “this OR that” than to do the harder work of finding “this AND that.” But what if some choices really are binary? What if some dreams require all of you, not just the leftover pieces?

The Artist’s Answer

The artists I most admire would tell me something different: Stop talking and start doing. Pick one. Any one. Because the only guaranteed failure is spending another 15 years debating which dreams deserve to live while all of them slowly die.

The Space Between

But here’s what the voice of hard-won experience whispers: Conflicting priorities aren’t problems to solve. They’re tensions to manage. The pull between creation and multiplication, between personal mastery and collective impact, between the romance of Florence and the reality of Texas — maybe that tension is where the real art happens.

Not in choosing one over the other, but in living creatively within the space between them. Or maybe that’s just another excuse.

Testing the Waters

What if I started drawing every single morning, right here, before the day’s demands arrive? What if I tested the brutal schedule now, at home — eight hours of art study daily, life drawing locally, getting up at 4 and working until midnight? What if I scheduled one month next year — just one — to study somewhere, anywhere, with no guilt attached?

What if instead of treating this as an all-or-nothing proposition, I treated it as an experiment in living?

The Deathbed Test

Here’s what I know with absolute certainty: On my deathbed, I won’t regret the business I built or the lives I changed. But I will regret the art I never attempted, the skills I never developed, the version of myself I never met because I was too busy being practical. That regret will burn hotter than any success will shine.

The Window Opens

I’m thankful to be fully alive, healthy, and with choices. The kids are grown and launched. College is paid for. The business runs smoother than it ever has when I disappear for weeks. Maybe it’s not too late. Maybe it’s exactly the right time. Maybe this is the window I’ve been waiting for, and I’m just too scared to climb through it.

Maybe the romance isn’t in Florence or Texas at all. It’s in finally having the courage to stop choosing and start doing. If it’s important enough to be, it will become a priority. Or I’ll find another excuse.

Your Turn to Choose

If you’re reading this and nodding because you too have a dream gathering dust while you do the responsible thing — stop nodding and start planning. Not someday. Not after you retire. Not when the timing is perfect. The timing will never be perfect. Life will always get in the way.

What’s one small step toward that dream you could take this week? Not the whole dream — just a step. Call it research. Call it exploration. Call it foolishness if you must. But take it. Because 15 years from now, you want to be someone who tried, not someone who almost did.

I’ve already started life drawing, and I’m exploring art programs. It’s not Florence yet, but it’s movement toward my dream. Movement is everything.

The Courage Question

My friend Cesar Santos, one of the most accomplished classical artists alive, burned every bridge behind him, sold his house, moved to Florence, and changed his painting style entirely, putting his entire income at risk to follow new dreams. This took tremendous courage and doubled my respect for him.

Two women I met at the Academy, after raising kids and being caregivers for everyone else, decided it was their turn. They moved to Florence to study art. It took tremendous courage and unbridled passion. I admire this kind of courage and wonder if I have it in me.

What dreams do you have that require you to muster that same courage?

Letting go of comfort requires tremendous bravery. Moving out of our comfort zones to take risks with unknown consequences. Are you ready to let go and get uncomfortable?

Or will you be like me, writing about it 15 years from now, still wondering?

Your Dreams Can’t Wait — Neither Should You.

Eric Rhoads