Now let's try to list all the negatives of a cupcake shop (and my hopes for making them less negative):

1. Potential financial ruin. Always a possibility. But I sort of doubt it, as I'm not the type of person to risk it all on this type of thing. And I am definitely the type of person to work my ass off to make sure it doesn't happen. Yes, things will definitely be tight in the beginning, and possibly for a long while, but I think even if things went really badly I would be able to find a way to transition it to something better. And if worst really came to worst, I will always be able to return to law.

2. Giving up sleep, weekends and vacations. Small business owners don't get any of those, particularly at first. And I love and value all of those things. However, I would hope that the business would be like the child I never had, and that I would be so excited about it that I would be happy to trade those things (for a while at least) to put my time and effort into building the business. And I would also hope that I would get some of those things back in a few years, once the business was stable and I had competent people to help me run it.

3. The physical toll of a mostly standing job. This may sound silly, but for someone with a back injury and a life of sitting jobs, it's actually a big deal. I may really hate it. However, I think it will eventually be really good for me healthwise. (And as the boss, I can always allow chairs at times.)

4. No family support. As of right now, everyone thinks this idea is ridiculous. Primarily because no one in my family has really seen the cupcake craze up close (and therefore it seems like a bizarre choice to them) and, because I have always been a very corporate type person, they don't picture me doing something that I think they all consider somewhat brainless. So for now at least, I really don't have anyone looking to provide much support....certainly not financially or physically. And that has been really hard for me to deal with. Particularly because I feel like I can't talk to anyone about it in detail, as no one understands all of the reasons I think it would be good for me. All I can hope for at this point is that if I really do it, they will support me once it's done. And I think they would, in general. But getting to the "done" stage is going to be a lot of hard work and it would really suck to do it completely alone.