Squeezing the tube

I'm quitting my job.
I'm quitting my job the week after I pass a 10 month probation.
I'm quitting my job the week after I get a cost of living increase of 2.8% and a raise, just for passing probation.
I'm quitting a job with a great organization, a good boss, and a benefit plan that adds about $1,200 to my check every month because I can use my husbands benefits instead of theirs; a job where I have an employee; a job where I direct my own department; a job that has put up with a fish hook in the eye, the death of a parent, and a wedding.
I'm crazy right?
I don't know, but as of a couple days ago I prefer to think of it as "squeezing the tube." You see, there is this podcast (yes, another one: Thing you missed in history class by How stuff Works) and they were doing a special on Vincent Van Gogh. It was awesome, but what stuck with me was a quotation they cited from an article or the encyclopedia or something where they are taking about the period when Van Gogh had just left Paris after all this formal training. He'd studied art, studied the masters, learned the techniques and decides to set off for Southern France to start an artist commune. It's then he started "squeezing the tube"- literally taking the tube of oil paint and squeezing it directly onto his canvas instead of dipping his brush in some little plate of paint. He had mastered everything he could learn from school and from studying others and started to experiment, to trust his craft. I want to think of this crazy little adventure in the same way.
I am giving up so much and yet my commute will go from 45 miles to 6.4, from nearly an hour, to 15 minutes. I will have health benefits and a full time job. I will have some Fridays off in the summer in exchange for 10 hour work days. I will have a very well respected and admired boss, a leader in my community and work with another well respected and active member of my Town. I will be learning a new field, grant writing, which may open new doors in the future, and give my husband and I a little more flexibility when we decide to move. I will have a mentor. I will be helping students and teachers achieve projects that otherwise may have not been possible. I will be writing. I will be researching. I will build relationships and funds.
I am taking everything I learned in marketing and PR and in school studying history and communication and leadership and laying it out on a whole new palette and painting a new canvas in new and different ways. I am squeezing the tube.
I can't wait to see how it turns out.