Another sneak peak into my upcoming book Only Human... ----------------------- Ivana has been a dentist for nearly seven years. She works as part of a larger firm of medical professionals, so is essentially an employee. The pay is pretty good, but a large portion of it goes to the managing board of the firm rather than into her pocket. In exchange, she doesn’t have to handle any of her own marketing or HR for her dental assistant, but she still has to pay rental and equipment costs, and can’t choose her patients or working hours. Ivana’s husband is pushing for her to start her own practice. He argues that her firm is taking the piss and getting free money from her, and that she has such a large and loyal client base that she could easily start her own dental practice and immediately be making five times more income, while becoming her own boss and having freedom to work the hours she pleases. Her assistant Carol has even promised that she’ll come along, too. And yet Ivana feels absolutely terrified of the idea. On one hand, a small rational part of her mind accepts her husband’s arguments and thinks they make sense. But this sensibility is completely dwarfed by a raving panic in the rest of her mind. Whenever she even begins to consider the idea of going it alone, a horror movie immediately blasts through her head. It’s slightly different every time, but the theme is always the same: it all goes WRONG. First, the firm she’s working for is outraged about her quitting and somehow gets her black-marked by the dental association, and she is stripped of her medical licence. Her clients choose to stay with the firm’s replacement dentist instead of coming with her, and she’s left with a huge start-up loan that she can’t pay back, bankrupting her and ruining her family’s finances. Her husband, bitterly disappointed at her failures, leaves her for another woman (sometimes this is even Carol the dental assistant). Bereft of money, support and confidence, she winds up homeless; a drug addict who brings shame to her family and eventually dies from being an absolutely pathetic fucking LOSER!