Paul E. Zimmerman.com

2026-04-03T12:48:00.000-07:00

Removing people from your life whose time is cheap makes a lot of things better.

(Check for your own reflection in that statement before agreeing.)

2025-12-08T19:21:00.000-08:00

"Anyone can imagine the invigorating feeling that comes with de-cluttering and minimizing, even if there are mountains of things lying around at home right now. It’s because we’ve all been through something like it at one time or another. Think, for example, of going away on a trip. Before you head out, you’re probably busy packing at the last minute. You go through your checklist of items to take with you and although everything looks fine, you can’t help feeling that there’s something that you’ve forgotten. But the clock is ticking, and it’s time to go. You give up, get up, lock the door behind you, and start rolling your suitcase along the pavement—with a strange sense of freedom. You think then that yes, you can manage to live for a while with this one suitcase. Maybe you’ve forgotten to bring something along, but hey, you can always get whatever you need wherever you’re going. You arrive at your destination and lie down on the freshly made bed—or the tatami mat if it happens to be a Japanese-style inn. It feels good. The room is clean and uncluttered. You aren’t surrounded by all the things that usually distract you, the stuff that takes up so much of your attention. That’s why travel accommodations often feel so comfortable. You set down your bag and step out for a walk around the neighborhood. You feel light on your feet, like you could keep walking forever. You have the freedom to go wherever you want. Time is on your side, and you don’t have the usual chores or work responsibilities weighing you down. This is a minimalist state, and most of us have experienced it at one time or another.

The reverse is true, too, however. Imagine your return flight. Though your belongings were packed neatly in your suitcase before you started your trip, everything has now been squeezed inside in a mess. The souvenirs you bought don’t fit in your suitcase, so you’re also carrying a couple of big paper bags. The admission tickets and receipts from the tourist sites you visited—you’re going to sort through those later, right? That’s why they’re still stuffed in your pockets. You’re standing in the security line and the time has come to pull out your boarding pass. Uh-oh, where have you put it? You start looking everywhere but you can’t seem to find it. You’re getting closer to the head of the line and your frustration mounts. You can sense the icy glares of the other people who are standing in the long line behind you, like your back is being pierced by pins and needles. This is a maximalist state.

These stressful situations tend to happen when you’re saddled with more objects than you can handle. You aren’t able to separate out what’s really important. With our desire to have more, we find ourselves spending more and more time and energy to manage and maintain everything we have. We try so hard to do this that the things that were supposed to help us end up ruling us.

Tyler Durden said it best in the film Fight Club: “The things you own end up owning you.”

-- Fumio Sasaki, "Goodbye, Things"

2025-12-04T10:33:05.761-08:00

It's easy to have a lot of friends if your aim is low.

2025-11-25T15:31:00.000-08:00

I have now seen the end of a 30 year long lesson, witnessed through the life of someone else.

The lesson is this: Do not seek to assign the responsibility for your own happiness to others, because you will then never achieve happiness.

Rest in peace, mom. All is forgiven.

2025-10-07T13:01:00.000-07:00

“Someone has to start. Other people might not be cooperative, but that is not connected to you. My advice is this: You should start. With no regard to whether others are cooperative or not.” -- Alfred Adler

2025-10-03T23:33:00.000-07:00

I've gone out of my way to attend one of Morrissey's concerts. It's a first for me after listening to his music for over three decades. It hadn't been in the cards for me before over all of that time.

It's not happening now as he's down with an infection in both of his ears.

Bad luck.

So, I can be mad about it. Or, I can try to spin this into some new opportunity.

I choose the latter.

Try it yourself the next time things go wrong. Immediately start looking for something to remake the pieces into. You'll be surprised at how much better the outcome of the thing you didn't expect often is versus the thing that you originally wanted when you decide to not just sit around feeling miserable.

It's not easy, but it becomes more so with practice.

I've done this many times, and it never gets old.

2025-08-13T14:43:00.000-07:00

2025-05-07T06:32:00.000-07:00

2025-02-13T13:56:00.000-08:00

We are now witnessing the truth of a meme being revealed: "taxation is theft."

2025-01-01T10:00:00.000-08:00

2025.

You may now be thinking of all of the things in your life and about yourself that you intend to improve.

A new year.

So what?

What about yesterday? What about that time that's passed and never coming back? Why haven't you already started?

2024-12-11T00:10:00.007-08:00

Destroying stuff is easy. Dumb, simple animals do it all the time.

Comparatively, building things is hard.

Keep this in mind when you think about who your heroes are.

2024-12-09T14:07:00.000-08:00

Intentional communities are superior to organic ones.

This also applies to the concept of family.

2024-12-01T13:44:00.002-08:00

Reading over the average response to any Yahoo Finance article about Bitcoin is an exercise in having fun watching other people stay poor.

2024-11-14T10:59:00.000-08:00

I now understand why some people, when they attain a certain station in life, seek out gated communities to live in.

2024-10-21T16:01:00.000-07:00

I found a map on the day that I realized that I wasn't born into the life that I want.

A door opened on the day that I realized that I would have to build it.

Things got better on the day that I started the work, and every day thereafter.

2024-08-26T07:42:00.000-07:00

2024-08-23T13:39:00.000-07:00

August 23, 2024

“Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.”

The world of George Orwell’s dystopian classic Nineteen Eighty-Four is divided into three totalitarian superpowers: Oceania, Eurasia, and EastAsia. And the novel’s protagonist, Winston Smith, is a mid-level bureaucrat within Oceania’s “Ministry of Truth”.

Early in the book we learn that Oceania is in the midst of a protracted war with Eurasia.

But suddenly the party announces that they were, in fact, at war with Eastasia… NOT Eurasia. Everyone was simply expected to forget that Oceania was ever at war against Eurasia.

The ideological dictatorship of Orwell’s world demanded that all citizens memory-hole the old truth and internalize the new truth “Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.”

Watching what little of the Democratic National Convention I could stomach; I couldn’t help but think of this scene from Orwell’s novel.

I watched as the Party leaders this week announced new truths. For example, the Party is tough on crime. They have always been tough on crime.

Everyone is supposed to forget how their cities are overrun with crime; or how they have long since been the party of “Defund the Police”, or “catch and release” programs that put violent felons back onto the street.

They say that border security is a major priority of the Party. Border security has always been a major priority of the Party.

Again, we are all supposed to forget how they let millions and millions of illegals come across the border… and went as far as to sue the State of Texas in federal court in order to PREVENT Texas from taking up its own efforts to secure the border.

They say the Party will stand up to Iran. The Party has always stood up to Iran.

Well let’s all forget about these guys paying billions of dollars to Iran for US hostages and the failed nuclear deal… or the fact that their more radical foot soldiers have essentially set up Hamas branch offices in the United States.

They claim the Party stands for Freedom. The Party has always stood for Freedom.

Feel free to believe it. But first you have to memory-hole all of the censorship, vaccine mandates, and cancel culture they shoved down everyone’s throats over the past few years.

This isn’t even about blatant hypocrisy-- though there was plenty of that on display. Remember a few years ago when they claimed that it was “racist” and “Jim Crow 2.0” for the State of Georgia to ask its citizens to show a valid form of ID before voting? Curiously, every attendant at the convention had to show ID to gain entry. But apparently that’s not racist.

Nor is this about blatant lies, exaggeration, or vague platitudes-- and there were plenty of those as well.

They went on and on, for example, about Kamala’s honest character… even though she was Liar-in-Chief when it came to covering up Joe Biden’s obvious dementia.

This is about their full-blown, Nineteen Eighty-Four style memory-holing some of their most important principles and acting as if they never existed. Kamala has always been at war with Eastasia. Kamala has never been at war with Eurasia.

It’s also notable that the Party expects its members to memory-hole the real problems facing the United States.

Kamala didn’t mention the word “deficit” even once. There was no discussion of reining in outrageously high government spending. She said “debt” one time, only to claim that her opponent would increase the national debt.

She did not say the word “inflation” either, and only in a passing footnote did she even graze past the high cost of living.

These are among the issues that real people care about. But everyone is supposed to memory-hole those too, and act like the #1 issue in the country is… abortion rights.

Abortion factored very heavily into her remarks, and into the Party’s platform.

They’re still moaning the fact that the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which essentially turned the abortion issue over to the states to regulate.

But facts don’t matter. Because according to research cited by the Wall Street Journal, last year there were a whopping 1 MILLION abortions in the US, roughly 10% MORE than before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

So why exactly is abortion access such a huge crisis and a bigger priority than inflation, domestic security, global security, the national debt, Social Security, and all the other problems that the country faces?

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, part of Winston Smith’s job was to alter or destroy old newspapers, films, and any other evidence that the Party had changed its policies.

The legacy media will continue to serve this role for Kamala and her Party. They’ve already expunged their own headlines from a few years ago proclaiming “Kamala Harris is the Border Czar”. Now they insist “Kamala Harris is not the Border Czar. Kamala Harris was never the Border Czar.”

They’re also memory-holing every poll that showed how Kamala was widely disliked and incredibly unpopular. Kamala is so fake and wooden that she makes Hillary Clinton look folksy by comparison. And the polls reflected that.

But those polls are gone. Poof. Now we’re expected to believe the new polls, that Kamala is exciting and popular.

Look I’ve said before that I don’t buy any of it. In fact, I’m stupefied that anyone believes these people.

But I’ve also acknowledged that the Party and the media and all of their allies will pull out all the stops to take the White House. And that scenario has major consequences.

It’s no exaggeration to say that a Kamala Presidency represents a major security and economic risk. For example, I cannot see the US dollar surviving as the global reserve currency by the end of her first term.

The outcome this November is far from certain. But their Nineteen Eighty-Four is reason enough to have a Plan B.

To your freedom,

James Hickman

Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC

2024-07-29T06:43:00.000-07:00

2024-07-25T06:24:00.000-07:00

The more Forex trading videos I watch, the more convinced I become that nearly 100% of the people making them are liars.

2024-07-19T06:09:00.000-07:00

2024-05-18T07:33:00.000-07:00

2024-05-17T07:44:00.000-07:00

From Mark Moss, a video that I watched last night. Uncle Scam is eyeballing the approximate $32 trillion USD in home equity that's currently out there, looking for ways to "free it up" so people can spend more money and create the illusion of a solid economy.

I feel like we've seen this movie before...

lol.

2023-09-30T11:30:00.002-07:00

During a very busy week pulling the various levers of my business, I've been thinking about people I know and have known who constantly careen from one crisis to the next, attempt to latch onto anyone around them who has resources of one kind or another, and seek bailouts.

I don't have much time for anything else when my activities are in full swing, so the little bit of poking around this subject that I was able to do I did with speech-to-text online searches with my smartphone as I moved between job sites. Not knowing where to begin, I tried a variant of what I wrote in the opening here, "people who are constantly in crisis." I also tried, "people with constant drama in their lives," or something along those lines. That mostly turned up results for people who thrive on drama, a personality type that seems to angle for finding or creating situations where they can be a "fixer."

That wasn't it. What I've experienced time and again is more like a "drowning man" type scenario: someone gets in over their head in some way, thrashes about, and attempts to simply grab on to the nearest person to them. It tends to end with both going down (unless the frantic drowning man can be subdued, but that's getting off topic).

I don't recall the train of thought that followed, but I tried my search again including "self-sabotage." That's when I started getting hits for something called Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD for short). It sounded interesting, so I looked into it. That seemed to line up more with what I was seeing in a couple of people recently and have experienced with others in the past. Not exactly, but there was some traction there. I see and have seen in these people impulsivity, drug and alcohol abuse, unstable relationships, out-of-whack self-image, eating disorders, and suicidal ideation. It seems to check a lot of boxes.

From the literature that I've reviewed thus far, I don't feel that I can consider it perfectly definitive of what I've been trying to wrap my head around when it comes to these types because it's apparently relatively rare, affecting maybe 1-2% of the adult population. So how could it be that I know a greater percentage of people who seem to exhibit this condition? Maybe I'm just lucky?

The part that is missing from the literature per my own experiences, glaringly, is the "bailout seeking" part. It seems that BPD sufferers are more about emotional support, belonging, and reassurance than material. I suppose that the transfer of assets to someone who exists with this condition could be perceived that way by them, as it would no doubt carry with it a sense of reassurance about their relationship with another, but the consistent absence of the specific topic from the literature I've read thus far makes me think that it's better explained by something else.

The only other thing I've come across that seems to match up is something called the Upper Limit Problem. In short, it's a psychological term that refers to a person's programed perception of how many "good things" they deserve in life. When that limit is exceeded, they self-sabotage to bring themselves back down to their set point. (This apparently is also sometimes called the "Oscar Problem," due to some successful actors imploding personally and professionally after winning an Oscar; if you search for this term, however, you'll mostly find a bunch of whining about race. Yawn.)

There's perhaps something here, but I think it may actually point back to me when it comes to how many of these types I seem to be acquainted with. Not that I'm somehow attempting to sabotage myself by associating with them, but that I largely exist in a social circle that is full of people that are nowhere near my own capacities. I can't think of a time that I've ever hit a milestone and then started feeling bad in any way. I also can't imagine a future me who would. If however I frequently meet people who seem to be acting out behavioral patterns that are suggestive of this phenomenon, then perhaps its an indication that I've surrounded myself with people who are not my peers. That's not a good thing.

That is something that crosses my mind from time to time, and it does bother me, especially since what seems to come with it is an eventual, practically inevitable request for a bailout. "Hey, I did a bunch of stuff with foreseeable, avoidable negative consequences and the shit that I've been throwing at the front of this fan over here blasted back into my face. Can I have some money?"

To continue to associate with such people while also avoiding this aggravation requires basically hiding who and what you are. You can't talk about your aspirations, plans, and successes with them, because they begin counting what's in your pocket. Those things are big parts of life, however, and they're intensely interesting. At least it is to me. If you have to hide it all the time though, what's left of socializing? "How about this weather today, huh?" "Did you catch the sportsball game last night? Wow, right?" It gets lonely. No thanks.

I have been making efforts to change this situation. Big efforts. But, progress is slow.

Things that are worth doing are almost never quick and easy.

2023-09-24T12:47:00.002-07:00

So it's been a while since I've used this thing. A long while, a couple of years.

A lot has changed for me since then.

At present, I've been thinking about making use of this platform (and the domain I keep paying for, but have just been sitting on) as a creative outlet. I think the "why" is that most of this type of energy, I've been directing it toward social media platforms rather than something more involved like this. Facebook, Twitter, etc. I deleted my Facebook account years ago. I haven't missed it at all. I gave Twitter a go, then got rid of it for a time. I tried it again when Elon was making noise about buying it, then stuck around for a while after he did and it looked like it could become more than the cesspool that it was. It is still a cesspool, and Elon seems to be embracing that now, rather than all of the great things he talked about making it, with shadow banning becoming official policy (their new CEO's "lawful but awful" and "freedom of speech, not freedom of reach" stuff). Mastodon is good, but there's a learning curve to it that stymies most people, it seems. In my experience, people would rather stay on familiar platforms and be abused because that's "more convenient." It's pitiful. What's worse is that in exchange for said abuse, the victims make their abusers rich. What a racket.

I'm not willing to stick around for such stuff, however. I prefer walking away from bad relationships and bad deals. It may be inconvenient, difficult, disappointing, etc. I think the alternative, just putting up with the shit, is worse.

That said, I'll explain the flags I've placed in the banner of my blog today: the flag of Liberland, the flag of Mexico, and the U.S. flag, inverted, a signal of distress.

I'm a part of all three of those now. I'm a U.S. citizen by birth. I'm a citizen of the upstart nation of Liberland by choice. I'm a resident of Mexico, also by choice.

I haven't been happy with being a U.S. citizen for quite a while. In short, I think this is a dying country, specifically because we have abandoned everything that it was supposed to be. A few months after the last time I used this blog, I attended Nomad Capitalist Live in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico, in May of 2021. I was looking for options. I found some. It was that event that started me down the path of internationalizing my life. It was there that I became an e-resident of Liberland and began acquiring the means of gaining their (our, now) passport. I also learned of the particular advantages of becoming a resident of Mexico, per my situation, and I met and made good friends who helped facilitate my becoming one. That process began the following August, and just after the new year in 2022 I finished the process in Mazatlán, Mexico.

There's a lot more to these stories. I'll save those for another time, I'm not trying to write a novel today. For now, I'll leave it at this: "Go where you're treated best," the motto of Nomad Capitalist. Like my stated reason for becoming interested in using this blog again, I'm looking for better places to be and to do, in the ways that suit me.

The dominant social media platforms are shit, so why continue to participate?

Countries can (and should) be approached in the same way.

Millions of 2019 Tax Refunds STILL Not Issued

2021-03-01T07:33:00.007-08:00

I found this article this morning:

'I still don't have my money': IRS still hasn't processed millions of 2019 tax returns

"The Detroiter, who has been out of work during the pandemic, is expecting a tax refund of more than $4,500 for 2020 via direct deposit...She's hoping she'll see that money sooner than an anticipated refund for her 2019 income tax return, which is still hanging in limbo somewhere..."It's been over a year now," Brodis said. "They accepted my taxes last year on Feb. 7. It doesn't seem like it should go that slowly, but there's nothing I can do to speed it up." (emphasis added)

Oh, but there is!

It's simple: DON'T GIVE TAX FREE LOANS TO UNCLE SCAM IN THE FIRST PLACE!

Print out one of these: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw4.pdf

Use the deductions worksheet on page 3, and note that lines 1 and 4 ask for ESTIMATES (so "guess" high! Enter the maximum amounts for everything you can here)

Carry line 5 back to the W-4 form, sign, turn in to your employer/HR department.

The strategy here is to get your per-paycheck withholding down as low as you can possibly get it, so you keep your "tax" money in your pocket ("tax", because if it's refunded to you, you never owed the tax, you just ceded control of your money to Uncle Scam for a year... or more). It might mean you end up having to write a check to Uncle Scam instead of receiving your own money back with no interest, but then you're not sitting around like this woman (and millions of others) wondering how you're going to pay for heat, food, rent, etc. Even better: when you are holding the money that you might actually owe, you can earn on it all year long before you have to fork it over to Uncle Scam.

I know that there's many out there that use this ridiculous system of overpaying their taxes as a sort of forced savings, because they otherwise lack the discipline to not spend every dollar they get their hands on. I guess I can concede that it works ok for those kinds of people... until it doesn't! When Uncle Scam fails you and won't return your money, he offers no apology, suffers no penalty, and will not compensate you for your losses and inconvenience. For those of you going through this now, perhaps this pain is finally worse than the "pain" of disciplining yourselves and learning to save and invest on your own?