OPM Disability Retirement Law: Place in the World

It is one of the hardest things to find.  The old metaphor of “finding a needle in a haystack” is easier than finding your place in the world.  What education to attain; of finding a lifelong partner to share your hopes, dreams and disappointments; of what career to choose; of which relationships to foster, and those to sever; and of activities worthwhile, others to abandon; these, and the global compendium of present choices and future conduits to embrace — these all, in their aggregate, result in one’s “place in the world”.

Modern life makes it difficult.  It used to be, half a century ago, that if you walked into an ice cream parlor, you had 3 choices — Vanilla, chocolate, and maybe a third.  Nowadays, there are so many flavors that it makes for paralysis of thought.  Part of the problem, beyond the infinite range of choices, is that the transience of life is available everywhere and opportunity to break the mold of generational stodginess is no longer an obstacle.  The antiquated idea that the children of X would “follow in the footsteps” of X — by tradition, by custom, by limitations of choices and “just because” — is no longer even considered.  Does anyone know what it means, anymore, to “follow in the footsteps” of your father?

Transience is to modernity as the horse & buggy was to the modern-day car, or as it is today, the EV, or electric vehicle.  It is difficult, these days, for a child to find his or her place in the world, precisely because there is no longer any stability of choices, along with an endless array of choices.  As multiple philosophers have stated many times, if everything is available, then the very concept of “everything” becomes a nothingness.

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, “finding one’s place” must be revisited, even in later life, because one’s place in the Federal or Postal job is in danger of becoming lost.

To find “another” place in the world, you may have to file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, precisely because one’s medical condition has meant a loss in your place in the world, and discovery of a new place may be a necessity.

Contact a Federal Disability Attorney who specializes in OPM Disability Retirement Law, and begin the new process of finding another place in the world before the availability of such places becomes a place of nothingness in this world of everything.

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.

 

Federal Employees with Disabilities: Simplifying the Complex

Genius is to comprehend the complex; competence is to utilize it; adequacy is to merely get by with it; to be lost is to become mired in it.  The world is complex.  Balance in a life is complex.  Trying to survive in a complex world requires a balancing act that even the most skilled tightrope acrobat can barely accomplish.

Once, when a reporter asked a mountain climber who had successfully scaled the North Face of the Eiger “why” he does what he did, the reply was: “When I am climbing, my only focus is to survive.  I do not need to think of anything but the next step, the next hold, and to ascend inch by inch.  Nothing else matters but the moment.”

But that life could be lived within the paradigm of that philosophy — of “living for the moment.”  To do so, of course, would require setting aside the baggage from one’s past and ignoring the tumultuous considerations for the future.  For most of us, we simply cannot live like that.  In this complex world, we try and “get by” through simplifying it — bifurcating it into comprehensible and digestible components; attending to each one at a time; then starting all over again at the beginning of the next day.  To simplify the complex is a skill-set that one must attain in order to just survive.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the complex universe of an administrative process like filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits is a bureaucratic morass that will often require legal advice, guidance, assistance and counsel.

It is the job of an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law to simplify the complex.  Consult with an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law when preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, lest you find that the complex remains too complicated and the next mountain to climb has become too steep an obstacle, like the North Face of the Eiger.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement for Federal Workers: Higher and lesser standards

Does anyone ever go into something, engage an activity, begin a project or initiate a hobby thinking that a “lesser standard” would be acceptable?  Or, is the “higher standard” always the option preferred? — and if we fall somewhat short of the goal intended, isn’t it better to strive towards that height of vaunted “unreachable-ness” like the lesser angels who try and climb up the ladder to heaven but fall short because of the misgivings of sins committed or blemishes of imperfections left unchanged?

One can always argue, of course, that all standards are somewhat “arbitrary”, and perhaps they are to the extent that we can always “do better”, and the self-satisfaction of reaching the pinnacle of any standard set is merely to realize that there can always be another step to take, a further goalpost to conquer, and a next and higher challenge to face.  To begin with a lesser standard is to foretell defeat before a journey is begun; whereas, to demand an unreachable standard is to despair of an idealism that cannot be fathomed.  What, then, is the “proper” standard to set?

To set it too low is to achieve mere mediocrity; to preface a too-high-a-standard is to defeat one’s advocacy before efficacy can be tested.

We, none of us, want to begin a journey with a defeatist mentality, and it is the setting of a standard — however low or high — that often determines the success or failure of any endeavor.  It is only when we “know” that a self-set standard will never be reached, cannot be attained and will never be near to the heart of our wishes and desires, that then we realize the utter futility of our own efforts.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have set a high standard in their careers and employment goals, it is a difficult road to take, both mentally and/or physically, to realize and come to the conclusion that one’s professional standards can no longer be met because of a medical condition that impedes, precludes and prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job.

No one ever sets out to reduce the standards of a life’s goal, but when outside forces such as a medical condition impact upon the standards set, the choice is to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

Federal and Postal employees have always set high standards for their work ethic. Sometimes, however, it is not the higher standard that defeats, but the lesser standards of reality — such as a medical condition that comes about unexpectedly in life — that forces the necessary adjustments that remind us of our own mortality, imperfections and the gap between the higher standards we set and the truth of our own misgivings.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Attorney for Federal Disability Retirement Claims: Of myths and unicorns

We too often consider myths and unicorns as those ancient stories based upon an error in analysis of transcendental or metaphysical concerns; that, somehow those “old folks from the past” (you know, the Celts, the Druids, the Normans and Romans and all of those other funny-sounding names once remembered for multiple-choice tests but otherwise lumped together as so many knights in shining armor with large red crosses painted across their chests) just didn’t understand the laws of the universe, Newtonian Physics or Einstein’s Theory of Relativity (even though we ourselves, or most of us, barely comprehend even the surface of such conceptual constructs), and that through misapprehension of the underlying “scientific” principles that were yet undiscovered or unrecognized, our sophistication in modernity can easily dismiss those beliefs of yore, of myths and unicorns.

But of our own myths and unicorns, of course, we can justify, though we cast away objective truth by a mere dismissive wave of the hand with certainty within the insularity of our own opinions, and declare dead the Platonic Forms or Aristotelian logic that once dominated the Western sector of the universe, and thereby cling to the very myths and unicorns we have created, though new and refreshing they may be or seem.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, it is important to distinguish between myths (i.e., those stories of the ancients that are told around bonfires and sacramental declarations in the corridors of echoing halls), unicorns (those folklore creatures still believed to be in existence by some, like hobbits and gnomes) and The Law (that funny creature that creeps about in the dark recesses of doubtful minds, that somehow governs the day to day activities of most, and for the particular Federal or Postal employee who must consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement, some specific application to protect one’s rights).

Before you begin the process of preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement, know The Law by consulting with an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law so that you do not mistake the misapprehension of the universe of Federal and Postal actions like so many myths and unicorns that yet pervade among us.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Those intersecting connections

We hear all the time about the shrinking world, the smaller universe, the global village – all metaphors to help and understand, to comprehend and be able to withstand within the insanity of a world that continues to intrude, intersect and impose itself upon every corner and aspect of lives lived and daily interrupted.  It is a way for people to cope with the fact that we can no longer avoid the reality of those intersecting connections from worlds, cultures and universes that make up the daily reality of our walking lives.

The newspapers globalize each and every issue; the television and cable news outlets care little for local news unless it, too has some national consequences; and so we live with the anomaly that the only time you might hear about your own hometown is if some horrific event occurs that other people in other towns might care about.  And, even when a story is reported about an event that occurs just around the corner from the news station, headquarters or whatever manner of identifying the central place where all of the equipment, studios and personnel gather to emit their airwaves of newsfeeds, they act as if it is occurring in some distant county or country, with perhaps a bit of weeping as an afterthought with a statement like, “And it makes it all the worse because it happened just in our own neighborhood!”

The world is indeed one comprised of intersecting connections, and we voluntarily allow for those connections to make our own perspectives molded into “theirs” by inviting various cable channels into our living rooms.  Do we really have a choice?  Can we just remain ignorant and ignore the reality of the global economy, the extended village and the universal concerns of the day?  How do we live with the complexities of intersecting connections, when we can barely deal with the local problems that beset us within the cocoon of our own lives?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to impact the daily ability and capacity to perform all of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal job, the microcosm of intersecting connections may well be magnified to a level where it competes with what is occurring on a more global scale.

Suddenly, the Federal Agency is moving to put pressure on you – like those competing foreign companies you hear about in the world economy.  Or, the Supervisor is no longer being cordial – somewhat like the world leader who doesn’t return calls to the President.  Coworkers no longer treat you as an equal – like nations that suddenly go rogue without explanation.  You have to file a complaint – like submitting to a U.N. vote for sanctions.

We have all been groomed and prepared to think in terms of intersecting connections, but for the Federal and Postal employee who suffers from a medical condition such that preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application becomes a necessity, it all comes back to a more local and personal connection: one’s health, and the need to focus upon one’s personal life.

No matter how global the world has become, never forget that it is the personal life of close connections that really only matters in the end.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Worker Disability Retirement: The minor incident

Does history alter significance of incidents as time heals or otherwise events are forgotten?  Does the perspective of the one directly (or even indirectly) impacted make a difference upon the writing of history, or is it as some cynics have countered – that history is the written narrative of the victors, and everyone else is merely annotated as mere footnotes, if at all?

As the Great War became overshadowed by World War II, or as some historians argued that it was merely a singular war with a brief interlude between; will other wars that follow, as memories fade and the dying veterans no longer appear at parades and salute the tombs of those fallen, overshadow the epic battles fought, the bravery shown and the comrades buried beneath silent crosses of lonely nights?

The private lives that each of us live, and the minor incident that looms large within the encampments of our own minds; the designation of “minor” depends upon a perspective, does it not?

Reading history is an interesting endeavor, if only because it expands by bringing in a third-person perspective of events beyond, issues not thought of, and incidents that never took center stage.  The authors, now dead, of second and third-tier fame, who may have had a book published here or there but are now forgotten upon dusty bookshelves that librarians never notice; and most of us are merely minor incidents in the greater traffic of life’s misgivings.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition that prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal employee’s positional duties, perspectives matter.  A “minor incident” at work can become a major issue – and the medical condition one suffers from, or how the agency views the interaction between the minor incident and the natural consequences of working with a medical condition – and one’s viewpoint in contradistinction to the perspective of the agency can be important.

Whatever the issues that may come about or arise during the process, this much is clear: The Federal agency or the Postal Service has one “viewpoint” about your medical condition, and you have another.  The difference is, you have to suffer the medical condition, while the agency sits idly by and scoffs at the major event as if it is a minor incident.  That may mean that it is time to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal employee or U.S. Postal Worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

Let the determination about whether a specific incident is minor or major be left up to the historian of tomorrow; what you, as a Federal or Postal employee must do, is to contend with the issues of today, and especially the medical condition from which you suffer, and which is far from being a minor incident.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Separation from Federal or Postal Employment: Passion

No, this is not April, and Easter has long passed.  Have we done a disservice by admonishing our youth to pursue it?  That the worth of a thing is inherently determined by our response to it, and not in the thing itself?  If passion is defined by an emotional fervor, barely controllable and unable to be contained, have we set up the wrong criteria by which to live life?  Work, vocation, career — are they as fungible as life’s castaways, rejected based upon a momentary or fleeting sense of acceptance or denial?

In Western Classical tradition, the “ordering” of the soul in Plato’s Republic, or the search for balance in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, was always the standard to pursue, and was essentially commensurate with the Eastern approaches of Zen’s denial of the body, the warrior’s acceptance of karma and the fate of life as determined by death; and the circle of life as represented by the Rigvedic deity of fire.

Now, how we feel, the passion one embraces, constitutes the totality of acceptance in a world denounced of living spirits and reduced to materialism and Darwinian determinism of the lowest order.  Often, what is lacking is more revealing than the manifestation of a thing; and thus do bifurcated paradigms such as being and nothingness, worth and junk, life and inertness — it is the erasure of one which magnifies the other.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have lost the “passion” for their vocation because of the introduction of a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties as a Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker — the “loss” has a determinate criteria by which to evaluate, and is not merely based upon the lack of an emotional response.

The Federal laws governing Federal Disability Retirement benefits is an employment criteria signed on by the Federal and Postal employee when you became part of the Federal Government Sector, and it allows for the Federal or Postal employee to apply for, and become eligible to receive, a Federal Disability Retirement annuity when a medical condition arises such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties.

In such circumstances, “loss of passion” may simply be a factual observation; the loss of vocation because of a medical condition is then a further consequence, and preparing, formulating and filing for OPM Disability Retirement benefits, whether under FERS or CSRS, becomes a necessary next step upon the consequential abandonment of that passion.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: The Structural Problem

It is what we never want to hear, and fear most:  that statement from an “expert” who informs us that it is a “structural problem“.  Not cosmetic; not superficial; not unessential; but that word, concept and image which goes to the very heart and foundation of the damage:  the center of the universe.  When the damage occurs there, and the rotting vein of progressive deterioration touches upon that central nervous system, then it becomes “structural”, and all of the rest may come falling down in a sudden dustheap of crumpled carcasses.

So long as it involves only the peripheral concerns, we keep telling ourselves that it doesn’t matter, that the foundation is still solid and they are mere extremities of lesser concern.  We do that with pain and other irritants of life.  And with medical conditions that don’t double us over or completely debilitate us.  So long as there remains a semblance of structural integrity left, one can go on and continue without regard to the symptoms which become telltale signs of impending doom.

For the Federal employee and the U.S. Postal worker who has arrived at the point of finality where one can no longer just venture forward, filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management becomes the best remaining option.

We wait because it is in the very nature and essence of procrastination that the inevitability of ignorance, neglect, disregard and sidestepping can delay the confrontation with that which we fear to know, refuse to acknowledge, and take comfort in detracting from the encounter with the truth of established verifiability.  As with science, the flat earth, and the view from a geocentric universe, no one wants to be told that there is a structural problem.

Too often, the Federal and Postal employee who finally comes to a point of needing to admit that preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether one is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is and has become a necessity because he or she has worked until the last straw was placed on the back of the proverbial camel.

Medical conditions announce harbingers of events to come, by symptoms calling for attention and attentiveness.  While the news from the architect that the problem is a “structural” one may not be welcome, it was always an indicator that the inevitable was on the fast-track of necessity and predictability; we just turned our heads aside in hopes of another day.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal & Postal Medical Retirement through the OPM: Altered States

When once the tide of change was welcome, where youth allowed for upheavals and malleability; replaced by age, leading to a staid and stable of stability, how repetition constitutes peace, an unadventurous respect for quietude.  But is not inertness the precursor of death?  Altered states and changed circumstances tend to be easily adapted to when one is younger; but as age seeks the sedate, so the vicissitudes of life and what they portend creates a havoc and turmoil of turbulence where the seeking of quietude becomes an end in and of itself.

That is why weekends are guarded with such ferocious aptitudes; and how Mondays invite the blues of depression and despair.  Medical conditions tend to equalize life’s loss of balance; for, as a condition of existence, the debilitating nature they impose, the chronic pain, the loss of mental acuity and disequilibrium of mind, body and soul; suddenly, whether a weekend or a week day, it is a matter of degrees within an altered state of existence.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal Worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is an option which the Federal or Postal employee should seriously consider when once the medical condition begins to prevent the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties in the Federal or Postal job.

For, it is within the context of a busy and tumultuous life, when the Federal or Postal employee must accept the altered state of existence where a medical condition begins to disrupt the continuity of productivity; the altered state itself must be changed; and the change is often the need to leave the Federal workforce, but with an income and annuity sufficient to provide a stable economic circumstance, and where health insurance can be retained for the foreseeable future in order to continue to receive the medical treatment necessary.

Federal OPM Disability Retirement may not be the perfect solution for every complex circumstance, but it is an option which provides for future choices to be left open, for opportunities remaining yet to be met, and for a positive altered state to be embraced where a negation of stability is encountered within the deep chasm of a medical condition which has caused a disequilibrium of life’s unexpected vicissitudes.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Postal & Federal Disability Retirement Benefits: Beyond the Efficacy of Advice

There comes a point where the tripartite intersection between factual urgency, advice, and the receptiveness to such advisory delineations, becomes a futile act of inertia.  Facts are often self-evident to most who seek to view and understand them; advice, based upon the facts as presented, is rarely profound or enlightening, and quite often merely states the obvious, based upon the facts as perceived; but it is the problematic venue of the one to whom advice is given, where negation of due consideration and persistence in intractable stubbornness betrays the efficacy of the first two prefatory components.

The good thing about advice is that it is free; the bad, is that it can be ignored or otherwise shelved into bifurcated compartments of a schizophrenic mindset. The real quandary comes, however, when the tripartite intersection is met with a fourth element, making it into a quadrilateral conundrum:  a state of affairs which actually is self-destructive.  Medical conditions fit into that category.

When medical conditions have a chronic and debilitating aspect, manifesting a progressive deterioration upon the individual through systemic failures and symptoms warning of greater impending trauma upon the body or psyche, and one refuses to acknowledge the signals or otherwise ignores the urgency of telltale signs, then the avoidance of the coalescence of facts, advice and receptiveness to advice goes beyond mere qualitative stubbornness, but becomes a character flaw of ignorance and deliberate dimwittedness.

Whether the medical condition involves physical pain and conditions represented by chronic back or neck pain, degenerative disc disease, shoulder impingement syndrome, internal knee derangement, Crohn’s Disease, Sjogren’s Syndrome, Rotator Cuff injury, or a whole host of other physical conditions; or, perhaps it encapsulates psychiatric conditions of Major Depression, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, suicidal ideations, Bipolar Disorder, etc. — whatever the medical condition, when the facts speak, the advice reinforces, and receptiveness to the advice is negated through stubbornness or intractable refusal, the time to consider alternative approaches to life must be faced.

For Federal and Postal employees who are under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, eligibility for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is that option of consideration.  If the medical condition impacts the Federal or Postal employee’s ability to perform all of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal job, then it is time to consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.

If the Federal or Postal employee’s treating doctor has already stated that seeking a different line of work is advisable, but that point of intersection where facts, advice, and receptiveness to such advisory delineations has been ignored, but where the fourth quadrant involving increasing medical manifestation continues to haunt, then it may be time to reconsider, and engage in the most primordial of acts which even the lowest of primates does not ignore:  self-preservation.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire