Start

The heart of Engine building is realising you are not a money making machine. You are a person. For the entire time people have been around, an air of desperation has hung over us. Wolves at the door. Hunger. A fight for survival. It is not necessary to fight. There is an alternative path.

There is also no magic want to wave. Fortuna doesn't bestow us with the same gifts and challenges, but don't let Fortuna decide. The immigrants who fled to the new world of America from the religious wars, famines, controlling monarchs, ideological clashes, and hierarchical classes set off to take control of their own lives.

With the weight of the world on your shoulders, you provide or die trying. An Engine isn't about you. It isn't about trying. It is separate from you. You are not your job. Building an Engine means you are also not your salary. You cease to be defined by your 'capacity to provide'. Your capacity to 'man up'.

Capitalism carries all sorts of other negative connotations, but a very strong positive one is the capacity to emancipate labour. To break the tie between who we are and what we are paid to do. Francois the Blacksmith. Lynne the Washerwoman. Sindile the Midwife. Brett the Fisherman. Graeme the Fortuneteller. Ruth the Moneylender. Matthew the Chickenseller. Of course, we may still choose a craft that gives us pleasure. In fact we may turn back to things that give us pleasure, but don't pay very well.

Obviously, we are under multiple pressures from multiple directions. The big ticket ones are Housing, Education, and Health. Then there is the amplifier. Kids. Those three guns to our head often make us feel like there is nothing spare to start hiring rather than spending our money. We can't put our money to work, because it gets fired/spent the second it enters the bank account.

So start. Engines start life as Buffers. Enough to handle the bumps and dips. Enough to lift your eyes to the horizon. Like those first immigrants who arrived in America working long hours in really difficult conditions. Maybe conditions were slightly better for their children. Maybe their grandchildren became professionals. Maybe their great-grandchildren became entrepreneurs. Maybe Fortuna smiled on those entrepreneurs. Maybe she sent them back to work.

The reality is one lifetime is incredibly short. Real wealth is built across generations. Real wealth is built by communities rather than individuals. 

But at some point, someone, somewhere, starts. You can be that someone.

Fortuna