It is always “new beginnings”, “new births”, “turning over a new leaf” and so many other faddish starts, stops, putters and “reset buttons”. The “New Year” brings about a calendric initiation based upon geometrical calculations as to what constitutes the inception of a repetition we fail to understand.
Does nature care whether or not we impose upon it the cycle of restarting from the first day of the year, or does the natural world simply move on, year after year, impervious to the artifice of counting by a calendar that says that it is now a “new” year? What does it mean to start something, to initiate, to begin to formulate and to prepare? What is it about human beings the world over that beginning something “new”, of initiating based upon a calendar that tells us that the cycle of days will now repeat itself from the first square of life – why do we find that attractive? Why is it considered “noble” and befitting of good character?
Resolutions to improve; changes for the new year; modifications to things previously performed “just because” it has “always been done that way” – starting something new, initiating a different approach, etc. – are they not an indicator that we can recognize mistakes and shortcomings and to realize the need for change?
Starting a Federal Disability Retirement application is like formulating a New Year’s resolution: It is first and foremost a recognition that change is warranted, and second, that unless the change comes about, the future will only deteriorate based upon the medical condition that progressively worsens.
Preparing, formulating and filing a Federal Disability Retirement application, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is the first step in a realization that there is an incommensurate anomaly between the ongoing medical condition experienced and the type of work required by one’s Federal or Postal position, and it is therefore time to start considering a change in one’s present circumstances so that the future will accommodate the deteriorating medical condition.
“Starting” – that is what is needed, and the prompt of a “new year” based upon the reset button of health concerns is certainly as good a reason as any other to begin to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire
OPM Disability Retirement, Et Cetera… 