At any extrapolated slice of a person’s life, the identity, character, narrative and personality of an individual is an incomplete description; but a description representing a particular period of a person’s life, together with the multiple preceding, intervening and subsequent sections, constitute the entirety of one’s “life story”.
In preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, it is often difficult for the Federal or Postal employee to find, choose, and apply the “right words” in describing the medical conditions and how they impact one’s positional duties; then to further delineate the impact upon one’s personal life. For, everyone wants to tell “the whole story”, thinking that the narration of a fractured autobiography reflects an incomplete compendium of a greater complexity of truth. But from the perspective of the “other” — i.e., in this case, the case worker at the Office of Personnel Management — it is necessary to tell the anomaly of the incomplete complete story: a slice of life, incomplete in comparison to the totality of a person’s life, but complete in that it answers the questions posed on SF 3112A, and satisfies the legal criteria which forms the basis of an approval or disapproval.
A person’s life can never be captured by an incomplete narrative; and just as a semicolon is a grammatical indicator where the story is meant to continue, so the complexity of a person’s life story — encompassing value, truth and relevance in a world devoid of a teleological framework — can only be captured imperfectly in any Applicant’s Statement of Disability. The key, therefore, is to recognize the inability to tell a complete story; and, often, it is best if someone else tells the story for you.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire
Filed under: Pre-Application Considerations | Tagged: a compelling story behing every fers disability application, a federal disability applicant got to understand his or her limitations, a story of human suffering behind an opm disability application, an emotional vs. reasoned personal account of disability, answering the questions that the applicant's for disability retirement asks, civil service disability, disability retirement for federal employees, emotional barriers and objective decision making during the postal disability application and process, Federal Disability, federal disability law blog, federal disability retirement, FERS disability retirement, keep your emotions in check during the opm disability process, law firm representing clients in opm disability law all across america, nationwide representation of federal employees, OPM disability retirement, opm disability retirement and the story of human suffering, owcp disability retirement, Postal disability, postal service disability retirement, representing federal employees from any us government agency, story of human tragedy, telling the medical story in the applicant's statement of disability, telling your emotional story from an opm disability attorney's perspective, the compelling story of an opm disability applicant, the federal disability applicant's need to tell his/her story, the history of a medical condition in the proper context of the applicant's statement of disability, the human side of a disability story, the human story behind the federal disability application, the opm disability application and choosing carefully the right words, the sf 3112a form and the inherent need for storytelling, the story may sound unfair but if it doesn't help to prove disability...., the story must be retold but...., USPS disability retirement, why is so difficult for a federal disability applicant to tell his or her story in the application | Leave a comment »