Any guitar expertise highly valued?

Learn all you can of SRV's techniques and incorporate them into building your individual style. Understanding your age it is easy to seek fame and fortune, but such objectives take many years--if they come. Continue to learn and practice well as you are doing. Eventually you will be able to acquire engagements (gigs) to play at locations you will feel comfortable in being present.

Play with other instrumentalists as often as possible and don't relegate yourself to one genre of music--namely SRV. Extend yourself and learn to play other styles so that one day you can call your style all your own.

From personal experience I first learned at age 16 and wanted to be the next Chet Atkins. For many years I focused strongly on his style of playing, but one day I realized that there can only be one Chet Atkins and one of me. So I concentrated on building my own style of playing that included the finesse of Atkins and others. I learned how to read and write music and that accomplishment opened the world of music to me. I have played professionally throughout the years when my military job allowed it and I played in every venue I could get while jamming with guitarists, pianists, saxophonists, and other instrument players. I've been in bands and have been a one-man band. Yet I never made it big because I had a family of four to support and realized that to fulfill my responsibilities of a husband and a father was to support them first. Expect some valleys or disappointments along the way, but never lose sight of building your expertise on the guitar in the meantime. One never knows how fortune might appear.

Set aside the ambitions to become a legend for now. Instead, focus on learning as much as you can of the field of music--to include music theory. I can promise your skills will improve once you do that.

You'll never become a Legend. You have a greater change winning the lottery... twice, before making it big in the music business... and making it big, doesn't necessarily mean you'll be a Guitar God, or Legend.

And you've been practicing a week, how are we supposed to tell you if you'll be a Legend or not?

The only thing you can do, is make sure you have a good instructor who will show you how to play, as well as teach you music theory. In a few years, you might form a band, who knows, maybe write some good material. But in the music business, it's not how you sound, or how well you play, it's who you know. I've heard great bands over the years that never had a chance to showcase their stuff, because well, there are millions of bands/artits/musicians out there... how are you going to make yourself standout and be different? How are you going to get yourself heard?

Yeah, when I was your age, I thought the same thing, that I couldn't see myself doing anything else for a living but playing guitar. Well, it's 16 years later and I run a family business. I play every now and then with my friends, or I play local shows, but nothing big... and well, that's ok.

If you're super serious, you'll look into going to Berklee school of music, or some kind of school for music. You'll want to learn not only how to play guitar, but how to record, mix, master and produce music. You'll want to learn more genres than just blues or rock and then get acquainted with recording studio's and try to get work as a studio musician.