Once a Federal Disability Retirement application has been thoughtfully prepared, formulated and filed with the Office of Personnel Management, it is a long engagement in something similar to trench warfare, where the long wait for the decision-making process must begin, endure, and come to fruition.
In days prior to public access to the internet, Federal and Postal employees had very little, if any, access to the public domain of communicating to other Federal or Postal employees to get a sense of the successes or failures of others in the same or similar endeavors. Access to other people’s experiences on public web domains, blog posts and other means of internet communication has allowed for interaction and communication within a wider community of Federal and Postal employees, in contrast to the pre-computer days (and yes, I am old enough to remember those days, when college term papers were written on an electric typewriter and space had to be calculated at the bottom of each page to allow for footnotes, as opposed to the ease of present-day cut-and-paste and automatic spacing by the computer program) when Federal and Postal employees were essentially isolated and unable to have access, let alone communicate, with others to attain a sense of affirmation by the experiences of others.
Having that sense of isolation is one of those greater difficulties during the waiting wasteland period of filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS or CSRS. Moreover, especially in times of greater stagnation — summer months of people’s vacations; Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, etc. — the sense of isolation is exponentially magnified. Reach out on the web and read about other people’s experiences in preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits. While each case is unique and different, one may gain a sense of affirmation by learning about the experiential factors of other Federal and Postal employees.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire
Filed under: Reflections of an OPM Disability Retirement Lawyer | Tagged: affirmative approach for OPM disability retirement, approaching an opm case in an affirmative manner, choices for an ill postal worker, communication as a key component to the success of your opm disability claim, community of disabled federal employees sharing experiences, confused about my fers disability retirement application, disability retirement at the USPS, disability retirement usps national representation, Federal Disability, federal disability postal employee, federal disability retirement, federal usps retirement disability, FERS disability retirement, fighting isolation feelings during the fers disability retirement process, injured postal worker, one of the most important ingredients in the opm disability recipe: communication, opm disability and the support from family and friends, OPM disability retirement, Postal disability, Postal Service disability, sharing experiences the opm disability retirement process, similar experiences fers disability process, social isolation and fers disability retirement, suppor, support groups sharing experiences with postal or federal disability retirement, supporting your fellow injured federal workers, taking an affirmative approach with your medical condition, voluntary early retirement for ill or injured usps workers |
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