Filing for OPM Disability Retirement: The Novel Approach

The genre represents the highest form of literature.  Poetry possesses its eccentric beauty; the short story its ease of brevity for the reader to pick up and finish in convenience of time, and thus its popularity; the biography and the epistemologically privileged cousin, the autobiography, its authentic historicity; and others by design of self-promotion, as Truman Capote’s “non-fiction novel” (an oxymoron?).

But the novel is the king of prose; of a narrative form which allows for many rooms in an endless castle of hidden trap doors and secret galleys full of antiquities and doorways yet to be revealed.  Perhaps that is why, used as an adjective, it defines a uniqueness of approach, akin to the traditional use of the word as a noun representing the highest form of art.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties with the Federal government or the U.S. Postal Service, engaging in a “novel” idea may be the best and only option left.

Where the medical condition no longer allows for the continuation of one’s career, and yet the Federal or Postal employee believes that he or she can still remain productive in the employment arena, it is indeed a novel approach for a benefit to pay for one’s inability to perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s job, and yet allow concurrently for the Federal or Postal employee to enter into the private sector, obtain a second vocation, and make up to 80% of what one’s former position currently pays.

For the Federal or Postal employee who is considering filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, it is precisely that allowance of continuation of productivity which fairly recognizes that there is not necessary incompatibility between a medical condition and contribution of talents.

Like the novel genre and the novel idea, they both acknowledge the penultimate value of human creativity, and allow for the characters to develop in the unfolding saga of a story yet untold.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

End Things & Federal Government Disability Retirement

The end of summer comes too quickly; the final period of a sentence; the last paragraph of a novel enjoyed with pleasurable ease; the end of an activity once started without regard to the fruition of completion. Then, there is the “other” end of things, as in a positive goal to achieve, or the end result of hard work.  In either sense of the word, there is a moment of finality, when a recognition of cessation occurs, and one cannot go on any further, as in a road which has a dead end.

For Federal employees and Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition requires the Federal or Postal worker to file for a CSRS or FERS Disability Retirement claim because the medical condition prevents one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s job and, further, where the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service is unable, or unwilling, to provide an accommodation for the medical condition, the sense that an inevitable end is forthcoming leaves one with a foreboding feeling of disquietude.

Whether to preserve one’s mental health, or to get control of the angst and anxiety one is overwhelmed with, the recognition that one must do something in order to get beyond an end-state of being, is often accomplished by the “doing” of pragmatic steps. Preparing and formulating to file for Federal OPM Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether one is under the CSRS or FERS Retirement System, is a positive step in that direction.

For the Federal employee and the Postal worker who must file a Federal disability claim, the use of the word “end” comes to the fore in both senses of the term: It likely means the end of one’s career with the Federal government or the U.S. Postal Service, but concurrently, the filing for Federal Government Disability Retirement benefits is a positive goal to attain for a specific end.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire