FERS Disability Retirement from OPM: Delaying the Inevitable

A fascinating historical period involved, in the 17th Century, the controversy between Jansenism, Pelagianism and multiple other “isms” concerning predestination, grace, effectual grace as opposed to prevenient grace, and whether our efforts for moral behavior make any difference at all, and Pascal’s response to such issues.

For, if something is inevitable, is there any point in expending the effort in attempting to “influence” the outcome if the outcome is predetermined, anyway?  If the Calvinist theology of a limited number of “the elect” is true, and X is not of the class of “the elect”, what would be the point of acting in a morally upright manner if it makes no difference?

Instead, wouldn’t human beings likely try everything to delay the inevitable — of clawing onto this life merely to survive at all costs, including murdering and enjoying every sensual pleasure, knowing that the inevitable was the pain of eternal damnation?

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, “delaying the inevitable” — of filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management — may seem somewhat akin to the 17th Century theological controversy described above — if merely because continuing in one’s career is preferable to ending that career and going into early medical retirement.

However, there is one crucial difference: The “inevitable” will allow you to work at another job in the private sector or for the state and local government, and still allow you to make up to 80% of what your former (Federal or Postal) position currently pays.  Thus, unlike the inevitability of hellfire and damnation, you can actually move forward into a second career.

Contact an OPM Disability Attorney who specializes in Federal Medical Retirement under FERS and stop worrying about delaying the inevitable; for, the inevitable is not as negative a state of being as you might think.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill
Lawyer exclusively representing Federal and Postal employees to secure their Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

 

OPM Disability Retirement Benefits: The Bridge to Nowhere

It is a metaphor which evokes images of hopelessness and futility, if such images can indeed be captured at all.  Whether of an attitude, a perspective or the existential reality of one’s personal circumstances, the question is, Why was the bridge to nowhere built to begin with?  There it stands, in mid-construction, suspended but unfinished, not leading to anywhere, not going in any particular direction, not coming from any place known.

It is often how we feel in the middle of our lives.  One has only to sit in a cafe, by a window, and watch the midday rush of people coming and going, seemingly with purpose, appearing with decisiveness, until you catch the gaze of someone passing — a knowing look, a pause, a hesitation; and at that moment of illumination, the stranger and you both know that the constant, ant-like activity is merely a whirl of coming and going upon a bridge to nowhere.

The furious pace of life; of rushing to get to work, working, then rushing to get home within a factory of people uncaring and unaware.  Then, when calamity hits — a medical condition that interrupts, intercedes and imposes its existence upon you — suddenly the routine of ferocious activity finds meaning in the very meaninglessness felt the moment before.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who can no longer perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal job because of a medical condition, the sense that one is driving upon a bridge to nowhere is common and troubling.  Of course one’s health should be a priority; and of course work, the “mission” of the Federal agency and the harassment that is initiated without empathy or understanding — all of that stuff should be secondary and subordinated to taking care of one’s health.

Filing for FERS Disability Retirement benefits is the recognition that the bridge to nowhere will not take you anywhere, and it is in order to regain that insight of meaningfulness that it is important to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application in order to focus upon the importance of priorities shoved aside — like one’s health.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Leisure, nature’s antonym

Observe the animals excluding the human one; what do they all do, except perhaps the male lion who awaits the predatory prowess of the lioness and her cubs who hunt for the royal crown; and the rest, of constant pecking, searching, laboring just to survive.  Nature’s law requires survival; survival mandates predatory consumption; the rest look out that they are not in the sequence of a food chain that includes one’s self.  For, it is the resting bird, the supine squirrel and the slumbering rabbit that becomes the meal of Nature’s law.

Leisure, by contrast, is a relatively modern concept.  In the yesteryears when wagons traveled upon roads uncharted, and weekends were comprised of a Sunday afternoon beyond the morning prayers and sitting upon the hard bench of a preacher’s sermon about sin and hellfire, even then the food to be prepared for the evening meal, the water to be gathered from the river beyond the horizon, and the animals that required tending lest fences left rotting allowed for the nighttime burglars of foxes and coyotes to wander uninvited for an unsolicited meal; no, leisure is nature’s antonym, unknown and relatively unheard of except in these days of modernity, where the right to full weekends and paid vacations and “down-time” and sustained interludes of systematic quietude are a necessity within this world of constant razzle-dazzle in noisy streets of uninterrupted brackets of thunderous blaring where we cannot even think without being bombarded with informational overload.

Leisure requires time; time necessitates periods of calm away from the constancy of survival’s instinct, where the appetitive division of the soul is taking a break from the search for satisfaction, thus allowing for a reflective repose, an interlude of contemplation and a self-recognition that, yes, I am actually enjoying myself in doing this mindless activity or fun engagement.  Leisure is, in the end, nature’s antonym, in the very resistance to being able to relax, to reflect and to remain relatively rested in retrospective renditions of relentless reaping in the reality of raucous and riotous living (sorry about the alliteration, but it cannot be helped for fear of further farcical fancies fettered forever from feckless and foreign flattery).

In modernity, it has somehow become turned upside down, where leisure was once unheard of, dangerous to the very instinct of survival, and rarely engaged except in the slumber of midnight exhaustion.  Now, it is declared to be its very opposite – of a necessary means to survive, and without which work and ‘making a living’ cannot be accomplished because time away allows for the restorative powers to reenergize those proverbial batteries gone dead.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who need to contemplate filing a Federal Disability Retirement application through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, there is little time to contemplate leisure as Nature’s antonym.  Chronic medical conditions tend to be a type of ‘work’ in and of itself – exhausting because of the constant attention it requires, and profoundly fatiguing upon one’s body, mind and soul.

That being said, obtaining a Federal Disability Retirement is necessary for precisely that reason – as a means of focusing upon one’s health, in order to attain a level of normalcy such that tomorrow can be another day to battle. In that sense, preparing, formulating and filing a Federal Disability Retirement application is an exception to the rule – for, it is not leisure as Nature’s antonym, but more likened to the days of yesteryear when the one time the body required leisure was to rest in order to regain one’s health, just to have another tomorrow to battle the greater world of predatory juggernauts.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Urban decay and the relevance of rye

There is a reason why phoniness cannot survive or endure for long on a farm, as opposed to the urban decay of mass population centers; the animals won’t stand for it, and there is no one to be pretentious for, when hard work, sweat and toil replaces the incessant striving for acceptance, consumption and coercive condescensions.  It is not an accident that Caulfield spends his time in the decay of urban life, amongst people who display a duality of faces and concealed motives, while all the time dreaming of an imaginary existence in a field of rye, catching all of the children who may run astray in the innocence of their blinded youth.

It is because the pastoral settings of American lore have always had a fascination of timeless yearning; as only a few generations ago saw the destruction of most of human existence, before the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, the desertion from rural countryside and mass migration from bank foreclosures and independence wrought and molded from self-sufficient living, so the age of modernity witnesses what the aggregation and amalgam of mass population intersection does to the soul of the individual.

Like the composite alloy which fails to fuse, the dental fillings crumble with time and decay by sheer inability to blend; the only means of survival is to pretend that all is well, that the ivory towers built, the emperor’s clothes which fail to fit, and the harmful toxicity which destroys — they all work, except behind closed doors in cubbyholes of private thoughts when the night no longer conceals and the truth of ugliness pushes to the forefront.

On a farm, or in the fields of rye where the crops must thrive and children may run in the innocence of their unpretentious exuberance, only the silent stares of barnyard animals look for judgment of purpose, and as pretending never gets the work done, so the need to put on a face of concealment does nothing but waste time and needless effort.

For the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker who witnesses the daily bifurcation between truth and reality, sincerity and concealed hostility, it is the openness of a medical condition which often breaks down the barriers of pretentiousness.  Suddenly, you become the target of meanness unspoken, of harassment barely veiled, and small-mindedness partially concealed.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, looked upon this way, is really no big deal when contrasted to what has occurred just before the act of filing; for, the sores which erupted and the boils that ruptured, were already seething beneath a mere veneer of civility, and the actual submission of a Federal Disability Retirement application is to bring out the obvious.

Whether the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the act of filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application —  first through one’s Human Resource Office of one’s own agency if the Federal or Postal employee is not separated from Federal Service or the U.S. Postal Service, or even if separated, for not more than 31 days; otherwise, if separated for 31 days or more, but less than 1 year, then directly to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management — is to merely unveil the phoniness of niceties and civility engendered, but now to openly see whether the Federal Agency or the U.S. Postal Service will remain true to its promise of non-discriminatory treatment of a Federal or Postal employee with an identified medical disability.

And like the job of the catcher in the rye who stands guard for those wayward children innocently running through the fields, oblivious of the lurking dangers just beyond in the urban decay of unconstrained emptiness, it is the lawyer who admonishes with the laws to enforce, which often prevents the weakness of the nets that fail to catch that heavy tumble over the cliff of a bureaucratic abyss.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Separation from Federal Government Employment: The Life of Clichés

Use of cliches allows for minimal effort of expression; the very loss of originality, of benefit derived from utterances overused but generally understood, and the utter dependence upon past acceptance of declarative thoughts without needing to consider the applicability of the conceptual connotation — these allow for laziness to wander throughout a thoughtless platitude.

The aggregate of a linguistic universe, however, is one thing; to live a life of cliches beyond merely stating the obvious, is to embrace, engage and ultimate believe in them.  “Life’s lottery has left me bankrupt”; “This is merely the quiet before the storm“; “All is fair in love and war”; “The writing is on the wall”; and as the heuristic methodology is forever forsaken, the thoughts one expresses become molded into the very character of one’s life and manner of living, with the consequential quietude of a static and emotionless construct, leading ultimately to a negation of that which defines what it means to be human.

The automaton of life’s requirements tend to beat down the creativity we are born with; as we were once “diamonds in the rough”, so the long journey of difficulties faced throughout the trials of daily toil, incrementally and insidiously wear upon us, until one day we look in the mirror and the reflection reveals eyes which stare back in a vacuum of human suffering not known in those days of former innocence.

Once, we laughed in the company of our siblings as the ocean waves rolled over the fragile sand castles we built without fear of impending doom, and not knowing was a vanguard of happiness, where delight in one another was yet unconsumed by the worries of economic turmoil and complexity of adulthood; until we somehow “grew up”, lost our sense of direction and compass of fortitude, and slowly allowed the heavy atmosphere of fear, trepidation and anxieties of living overwhelm us.  We became a walking cliche.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must face the reality of such a situation, especially when a medical condition begins to prevent the Federal or Postal employee from performing the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal positional duties, the need to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits becomes more and more of an urgent requirement.  Working for a Federal Agency or the U.S. Postal Service, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is in and of itself a challenge; what with the pressures of budgetary cutbacks and insistence upon squeezing blood out of a stone (there we go again), it becomes all the more unbearable when a medical condition is introduced into the equation.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through one’s Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service may sometimes seem like waving the proverbial white flag of surrender; but, often, that is the only alternative left, unless the Federal or Postal employee wants to become the modern-day version of a walking zombie, devoid of any real life left to live.

Ultimately, all Federal Disability Retirement applications must be decided by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether submitted first through one’s Federal Agency or the U.S. Postal Service (for those Federal or Postal employees not yet separated from service, or not for more than 31 days), and it is often a daunting administrative process full of bureaucratic pitfalls.  But the alternative is to merely live a life of cliches, where you must never lose track of time, and filing in the nick of time is important, lest you fail to be as clever as a fox, but hopefully, where all is well that ends well.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: The advantageous disadvantage

In life, we often fight over things even when the goal has already lost its meaning, or the resources expended far outweigh the benefit to be gained.  We take advantage of things, people, and other concerns, despite knowing the consequences of harm to the very essence of our being.  It is as if the evolutionary core of our DNA determines our actions, like addiction upon the dawn of broken promises and childhood wisps of tearful mournings left behind.

Determination of actions despite knowing, and despite the constant drum of billboards, radio advertisements declaratively preaching against, and the distant voice of one’s nagging mother — ineffective reminders like shadow boxing before the perfect storm.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal Service workers who struggle daily with 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 positional duties with the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service, the daily fights and taking advantage of the slow process of justice in remaining in the Federal job or the Postal position, is a toil of principle; but of what gain is there if one’s soul is being destroyed?

The Leviathan of Legendary Lore bespoke of creatures who destroyed without care or compassion; and today’s metaphor of such monsters are represented by gargantuan bureaucracies which crush without blinking an eye, unaware of just another number in a long line of conquests like unnamed tombstones in an abandoned graveyard.

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, is a step towards taking advantageous advantage over a situation which has become untenable; the procrastination and delay in order to fight the Goliath of modernity, is to remain in a rut where one may continue to take advantage of a disadvantageous situation, and remain in the clutches of a slow torture, like the frog who sits comfortably in a pot of warm water, unaware that it sits on a stove set for boil.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement Lawyer: The Balance of Body

Have you ever noticed that, if you attempt to compensate with one extremity over another, whether because of pain or temporary incapacitation in an attempt to alleviate and relieve the lesser limb, that the one in use becomes slowly debilitated as well?  The body is a balanced mechanism; it is designed to work in coordinated fashion, as a unit of entirety.  It may well be that if one component of that working aggregate requires temporary suspension, that another unit may, for a time, serve as the greater replacement by working “overtime”; but in the end, all workers are expected to return to full labor, lest the entire operation itself shuts down.

That is why pain and similar symptoms serve as a warning system for a greater condition.  People often think that compensating for a medical condition can be derived through persevering and ignoring; instead, what happens is that the other parts of the body begin to shut down and deteriorate.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to prevent the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties in the Federal Sector, the attempt to overcompensate often leads to greater exacerbation, both in terms of the medical condition itself, as well as for the agency through bringing greater attention to one’s self.

It may be that a Federal or Postal worker may, for a time, get away with persevering and neglect of the warning systems; but in the end, the intricate and delicate balance of body, like the greater ecosystem of nature, will begin to reveal signs of wear and decay, and the time lost in taking the necessary steps will merely be unrecoverable segments of lapsed periods, where commas and pauses needed to be overcome in the preparation, formulation and filing of a Federal Disability Retirement with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire