Why Entrepreneur? What to do?

For context, a little about me:

My family came to the US - Canarsie, Brooklyn - the summer before I entered the 4th grade.
Ever since then, in some form or other, they have been in retail. First selling men's "active wear"in New York's then flea markets; later, women's shoes in Florida's flea markets.
My brother and I spent our childhoods working with our parents, helping out as we could.
When I turned 16 and was able to drive, I would go out on the weekends and set up shop, selling shoes at another market, to help out. My parent's plan for me was to go to college and become a professional. My mother's dream was for me to sit in an office (with air conditioning) and have my weekends off.

So, I went to college, got a degree, and began working as a professional. Slowly making my way from Florida, back to Brooklyn. After a number of years working for others, a few things became clear to me:

* I enjoy hard work and challenging myself, but dislike the idea of doing so for someone else's benefit. (With the exception of charity of course)
* While I can see or imagine some amazing jobs down the road - on a long career path - the truth is, that with a non-technical B.A. it'll be a while until I can climb the ladder to what I hope would be a satisfying and fulfilling position. On the other hand, being my own boss will force me into a decision making position, with all its risks and rewards, now!

While I don't have the experience of a seasoned executive, or the knowledge of an MBA grad. I do have the benefit of my upbringing, and growing up in a family business. I'll probably make many mistakes - hopefully not putting myself under - but the allure of creating something myself, and succeeding at it, is jut too great.

The more I thought about these things, the stronger my conclusion was that I should work for myself.

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Most recently, I've found myself unemployed, and with the time for this type of self-reflection. And so, I've begun what is turning out to be an iterative process of elimination on the path to self-employment. I'll spare you the pain of most of the iterations, so here is a summing up of what I've concluded:

My initial instinct has been to shy away from retail. For one, it is something I've done - a lot! Secondly, the economy is bad right now, who's buying stuff? And finally, I've watched my parents struggle for 15 years with a store. They have been trying to achieve the dream of 'leaving it with a manager' letting it 'run itself' yet always being disappointed, and always being tied down to the store. They can barely take vacations, or days off.

I don't care how hard a worker you are, or how committed to a goal - the prospect of 7 day work weeks, with no breaks, in perpetuity is not an appealing one.

On the other hand, it is something I've done - a lot.
I really enjoy the daily interaction with a multitude of people. I think I would find the challenges of staying on top of a market and keeping my products relevant satisfying. If I have my own store, I'll have an almost limitless outlet for my creativity through marketing and store displays.
And lets not forget the dork appeal of being able to analyze my sales figures, expenses etc. Maybe I could even dust off the'ol statistics software package I bought for that class in college and run a regression or something crazy like that.

So yeah, from this pro/con list, I vote pro.
The choice of what my retail endeavor will be is obvious.
If I know anything about retail, I know shoes!