When the most logical course of action is to sit still

Life might not be getting anywhere right now, but I try to remind myself that change for the sake of change is a futile process. I often find myself wondering if I am doing the right thing. Emotionally, it doesn't sit too well. Keeping with the space travel analogy that I started this blog with, if all you had was all the fuel in the world, it's exceedingly easy to put yourself in the middle of nowhere. Let's face it, space is called space because there's a heck of a lot of vast open space out there. I'm also not fond of the setting out with little more than the clothes on my back feeling that I had when I started university. Besides accumulating resources, I've also been:

• researching different parts of the country that I might want to move to
• looking into the requirements for moving to the USA
• examining the costs and potential returns of buying a small business
• doing a feasibility study for a business idea that I have and might want to take up
• exploring the entry requirements and long term prospects of different career paths

The most frustrating thing about this is that ultimately I keep coming back to the same conclusion, I'm not in the proper mental state to make decisions that big right now. Then to add to it, every time my parents try to interrogate me over this sort of stuff, they disregard all the information I find, tell me how they think things work and tell me that I can't just dream, I have to research.
One of the things I looked into was going into air traffic control. I was told that I was crazy for even considering it and that I can't waste money training for something that there's little demand for. Then they waited till my brother was over to ask him about the demand for air traffic controllers. It's not a mishmash of different agencies where you have to convince someone to hire you afterwards. Everything is controlled by one agency, the employer. Parts of the process are contracted out, but they have a good process set up that weeds out practically anyone who wouldn't be at it for life, they'll also only train as many people as they think they'll need and they'll only train the best of them. It costs $1000 for training, which includes room and board. You'd probably be hard pressed to find four months of food for that much, let alone a place to stay and job training. I'm not totally convinced that's what I want to do with the rest of my life.
Something else I looked into was teaching English overseas. Mainly looked into it because something had me wanting to see what life was like in china where my parents come from. My dad was real excited about this idea. My mom kept pressuring me to make a quick decision on it. Neither of them seemed to show any appreciation for the fact that, it's almost a 1/3rd pay cut from the job I have now and I can expect to make about 1/2 of what I'll be making at the position I'm currently training for.
An idea put forward by my dad was to go into dentistry. Another idea that I had was to go into optometry. The prerequisite for both is fairly similar to a premed program. When I told them how the entry process for optometry went, my parents immediately tried to discourage me away from it. After I pointed out that they thought dentistry was a good idea and the dust settled for a few minutes, I was told that I didn't need another degree because I already have one and they lectured me again on doing research instead of just dreaming. So I looked up the entry requirements and read them out to them.
It's all a retelling of the story of the path I made down the side of the house. When I started, I started under the assumption that they had measured things and started spacing the stones fairly close together, like most stone paths. I got about half way down and went looking for more stones. When it became apparent that was all I had to play with, I tried to decide between even spacing and roughly one pace spacing. Then I set off to space the stone one pace apart. There were a few stones left over, which now level the garbage can. For months, I was pestered to finish the path. I had no idea what they wanted me to do to it. When asked to clarify what they wanted, I was told that the minimum requirement was to get from the front to the back. This puzzled me further as I could do it with my eyes closed. After all, I had spaced them one pace apart based off how I walked. They yelled at me, called me lazy and what not and I couldn't figure out what they wanted me to do. Then one day, "Thanks for finally finishing the path." "Umm, it doesn't look any different to me." "So it's been like this all along?" "It's been like this for months You've had me going crazy trying to figure out what you wanted done with it because you've been too lazy to look at the side of the house?" "Well, you never do any work, I never see you doing any work." Sure, yell at me for not slaving away at something because I finished it months ago and you've simply been too lazy to check on it.
I'll get to watch this again when their attitude bites them in the ass one more time when it comes time to pay for my sister's schooling. I don't know enough about their employer pension plans to guess when the discrepancy between their idea of what's going on and how things really are bites them hard. There's still a chance that it might not, but I'm leaning towards impending doom.