Future without amendment

"All human situations have their inconveniences. We feel those of the present but neither see nor feel those of the future; and hence we often make troublesome changes without amendment, and frequently for the worse." -- Benjamin Franklin

[First: his use of "amendment" confused me. I knew it could mean an alteration, but now I've looked it up, I also know it can mean an improvement. I don't think it's used often in this meaning, these days.]

Ole Ben had a point, as often. For example, when I moved to this small apartment in a lower-middleclass district some years ago, I think I was imagining that it was to be reasonable short term, that I would get something more luxurious or build a cool house, or something, within a few years. Something like that may still happen one day, never say never, but in the mean time I've sort of settled down emotionally, and seen that while there's nothing glamorous about where I live, it's not bad either, I lack for nothing important, and I'm comfortable. I have no pressing reason for drastic changes.

And while I like watching shows like Grand Designs (about people building an unusual house) if one pays attention, one thing almost all these people say are: if I'd known how long, hard, grueling, and expensive this was to be, I might never have started.
And just so: while anybody in the world can readily point to disadvantages of their current situation, it's an absolute guarantee that any new situation you change it for will have new disadvantages, and you'll usually not be able to predict them.

Of course change can be good, I'm just saying one should get some perspective on it, and not just do it because it's "what's expected" or whatever.

Update: TTL sez:

I've come to the conclusion that all projects worth your while are impossibly hard to do.

Writing a book, composing a piece of music, designing a typeface, painting a painting, implementing a programming language, creating a website ...

I've done all those things, and with each one I've thought to myself: "Had I known how mentally taxing this would be, I'd not have started". And when you finally complete the damn thing, the feeling of relief is so great that you feel you could fly.

I'm pretty sure designing and building a house is no different. Impossibly hard for those crazy enough to take the plunge. And similarly satisfying when it's finally completed.

Stephen Fry writes about this very subject in his latest miniblog. It has this brilliant quote:

“A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than for other people.” --Thomas Mann

... and contains this:
'I began writing seriously when I was about thirteen. Out streamed poetry, stories and novels, the latter of which were always aborted early, usually half way through the second chapter. It took my friend Douglas Adams to encourage me to go further and he did this by pointing out that the reason I had never managed to finish a novel was that I had never properly understood how difficult, how ragingly and absurdly difficult, it is to do. “It is almost impossibly hard,” he told me. It is supposed to be. But once you truly understand how difficult it is,” he added, with signature paradoxicality, “it all becomes a lot easier.”'
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