Just do it
@Etherscreen. That’s the best advice I can give. Took eight years off myself.
Find a CFII. If you fly a couple of times and it doesn’t feel right, find another. But usually not a problem.
If anything significant has changed in your health status since stopping flying DO NOT APPPY for a medical until you KNOW you’ll pass or get a professional AME dedicated to patient service and NOT just blindly submitting crap to FAA in your corner FIRST. An application and denial is permanent. You have OPTIONS if you do NOT apply and get rejected.
CFI will knock the rust off at the same time as they start teaching you the Instrument if you like, usually.
Midwest to ATL is pretty easy in most reasonably priced aircraft. Midwest to CA is about of a haul in anything not designed to go fast. Neither will beat the airlines on price or convenience or “all-weather” capability to keep a schedule. Flexibility is a must if traveling by light aircraft, even very capable ones. The more capable, the more training and the more the price tag, both up front and on maintenance.
Just being honest with you on that last part. You have to want to be a pilot and want to fly yourself to make it worthwhile. It’ll be rare that it’ll be economical vs the multitude of airlines and their pricing these days.
If you need XC time SOME of it can be done with a Safety Pilot, someone else who needs time and wants to bomb around building it with you. Get with the instructor FIRST and figure out a plan with them and inquire about other time building students. If you’re renting the aircraft, it’ll be easier to do this with someone else from the same school/rental place. But instructor first so they can ingrain specific behaviors you need before having other pilots mess with those who’ll let you get away with things your instructor won’t.
When you say “learn like the pros” that can mean a lot of things. What are you looking for? (And which pros? haha... military pros learn differently than civilian pros, mostly because most civilians don’t have a high performance turboprop or jet paid by the taxpayer loans to start off in hahaha...)...
If you mean accelerated training, there are places that specialize in that. Can’t tell ya if there’s any in KC but with Wichita being the old Aviation manufacturing capital of the country, you’re a lot closer to that “ground zero” and there’s a lot of training facilities there. But honestly, unless there’s a good name accelerated place close by, any good CFI with an open schedule can do heavy flying quite often if your wallet is ready to whimper.
And you’ll have a hard time GENERALLY right now finding bored CFIs. There’s a lot of hiring going on in the airlines and it has attracted a LOT of students compared to normal or down years and everyone’s busy, generally. But still, no reason not to get started.
Starting mid-winter is going to introduce you to weather and delays right off the bat anyway, which will be realistic “training” for the future. Some times of year are better than others for VFR time building, just normal.
Welcome. Let us know how you’re doing and maybe some KC area folks here will pop up with some good instructor names. There’s been a lot of turnover in instructors everywhere due to that airline hiring going on, done aware that there’s a lot of new instructors. (Me included but not because of airline hiring. Just because of timing in life for me.) Some want to teach and will bust their butts to do so, and others are time builders and will be gone before you’re finished and handing you off (hopefully at least!) to another instructor. A few here on slower plans are on instructor number four. I don’t recommend going that slowly.
You’ll probably have some sticker shock at prices if you’ve been out nearly a decade also. Nothing ever gets cheaper in this biz. Plan accordingly for the budget.
