To compromise you could set up an entirely new account, and keep your old one running as an essentially defunct account, but one you could still keep checking. You could use a web based e mail account such as hotmail, who now call themselves "outlook" and are a lot better than they used to be, or g mail.
Just change your advertised e mail address to the new one so that more and more customers get used to it. But you would still have the reassurance that the old one isn't dead in case any long standing customers send to that.
Why don't you have a website, out of interest?