OPM Disability Retirement under FERS: The Routine of Life

We live mostly on automatic pilot; whether by insidious lack of awareness or some evolutionary mechanism that blocks out and limits the stimuli that bombards, so much of life is lived as a routine — without thought or even consciousness (do we equate the two or recognize the distinction?), but like the automaton working deliberatively in jerking movements of mechanized stridency, we may grumble but carry on with the routine of life.

And even when we are unaware that we do so, we are reminded of how predictable our actions have become: the garbage is emptied on certain days because the manner in which we live takes on a quantifiable aspect of regularity; the times we walk the dog; the leisure activities; and even our responses to questions posed. Is it ever possible, or even desirous, to live a life without routine? But then, wouldn’t an unpredictable life become a predictable one precisely because the routine of life becomes one of unpredictable predictability? Or is it the other way around — of predictable unpredictability?

Yet, those who moan and groan about the routine of life — its inherent monotony; the loss of excitement in failing to engage in the arbitrariness of the path less traveled (doesn’t that poetic description itself become predictable in the course of everyday conversations?); the comfort we find in the very commonplace “sameness” of daily living — we miss it only when we lose it.  It is like two old people who have shared a lifetime together, but for some ungodly reason decide to divorce, thinking that excitement and fulfillment are achieved by destroying the routine of life; and only afterwards do we appreciate the monotony of that routine.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the Routine of Life is that which one wants to regain.  For, it is the interruptive medical condition that destroys the comfort of such a routine.

Preparing an effective OPM Disability Retirement application is the pathway towards attaining some semblance of the Routine of Life, and of getting back some semblance of monotony which we all complain about but unknowingly desire.  Consult with an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and begin the process of re-ordering the chaos that has beset a life of medical issues, and begin to work towards reaffirming the Routine of Life which we all crave and desire, once lost but want to regain, and constantly yearn for the one thing that we all complain about.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire