Plan B, it turns out, is a lot harder than it seems. But that hasn’t stopped cubicle captives from fantasizing. In recent years, a wave of white-collar professionals has seized on a moribund job market, a swelling enthusiasm for all things artisanal and the growing sense that work should have meaning to cut ties with the corporate grind and chase second careers as chocolatiers, bed-and-breakfast proprietors and organic farmers.

Indeed, since the dawn of the Great Recession, more Americans have started businesses (565,000 of them a month in 2010) than at any period in the last decade and a half, according to the Kauffman Foundation, which tracks statistics on entrepreneurship in the United States.

The lures are obvious: freedom, fulfillment. The highs can be high. But career switchers have found that going solo comes with its own pitfalls: a steep learning curve, no security, physical exhaustion and emotional meltdowns. The dream job is a “job” as much as it is a “dream.”

“The decision to become an entrepreneur should not be made lightly,” said Paul Bernard, an executive coach in New York who has advised professionals on starting small businesses. The press, he said, has made heroes out of former investment bankers and lawyers who transformed themselves into successful dog-jewelry designers and cupcake kings. “But the reality is that, even during boom times, most new businesses fail.”

Many are surprised to find the hours and work grueling.

That was a rude awakening for Mary Lee Herrington, a 32-year-old St. Louis native who worked at a white-shoe law firm in London. Two years ago she ditched her job as a fourth-year associate, making $250,000 and working 60-hour weeks, to pursue a new life as a wedding planner. Her experience? She enjoyed organizing galas as a law student at the University of Pennsylvania. “It was really creative, it was fun, I loved all the details: the party favors, the programs,” she said.