Postal & Federal Employee Medical Retirement: How We Respond

It is the stuff of which life teaches us; the lessons learned, the character growth; of how we respond.  Whether it is in response to the Corona Virus, or to a tragedy more singular and personal, the “process” question is important: How do we respond?  Did we respond with foresight, thoughtfulness, calm and collected?  Or do we flail about frantically in a panic, not knowing what we are doing but doing it nevertheless because, to “do something” is thought to be better than to do nothing at all?

As store shelves become emptied and the predatory few of price-gouging increases, it becomes more and more of a free-for-all in a society where anarchy is on the border’s edge between insanity and rational discourse.  Isolation and self-quarantine seem to be the key to containment, in this case, and social media allows for a semblance of ongoing communication and connectedness; but in the end, how we respond as individuals is important to consider.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition is one beyond a deadly virus, but is instead a chronic condition lasting for over 12 months, this time of isolation may be a moment to consider preparing and formulating a Federal Disability Retirement application, to be ultimately filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Contact and consult with an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement and begin the process of the long bureaucratic procedure. That, in the end, is the right way to respond — of how we respond for the long haul.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement Legal Representation: Only for a season

Is our existence influenced by the seasons that alter, or are we so alienated from nature’s rhythms that we no longer follow the evolutionary trails that other species obey?

Seasons change for a reason; whether our anthropomorphically-imposed reasons or the dictates that consider the rhythms of a universe in constant flux — whatever the foundational purpose and teleological basis explained, the order of the universe allows for consistency such that life can comfortably thrive.

Some things last only for a season, then wither, die — or seemingly so, as leaves turn crisp with the cold winds of Fall, then drop and twirl with the streams of divine breath to disintegrate into the dust of this earth.  Winter covers the soil beneath in a sleeping slumber of hibernating snores, only to begin to see the first greens of Spring, then of the unrelenting tides of Summer’s haze.  Yes, it is only for a season, and then the changes occur.

We can become lulled into thinking that eternity is the exception for our lives; that the artifice we build, of tall towers and endless miles of concrete roadways reflect the immortality of our own existence, but then the next season comes along, and we are reminded that — no, it is only for a season.  Health is like that as well; and while sickness and medical conditions may last only for a season, there are others that must endure beyond, and beyond that.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal Service workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition lasts for more than only a season, it may be time to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

Nature’s Season determines for us the rhythm of an impervious universe; and while we may believe that a medical condition is only for a season, the Laws of Nature dictate and decide, and it is up to us to take advantage of the time left, if only for a season, and prioritize our lives, and never take for granted the health that we may yet enjoy, if only for a season.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill
OPM Disability Lawyer

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Human & humane activity

Does the dropping of the single vowel make a difference?  Should it?  Or, should the very status of being “human” encompass and naturally include being “humane”, as well?  Should they not be synonyms, or even indistinguishable as an amalgamation of vowels and consonants, as opposed to two distinct words, even if one is considered as a mere extension of the other?

For, it is precisely the unique characteristic and capacity of the former to exhibit the latter, and it is the latter which defines the essence of the former; and so, in many respects, they are identical terms, even if the latter contains a total of 6 letters, comprised of 3 consonants and 3 vowels, whereas the former has one less, with 1 more consonant than a vowel, making it into an uneven number of letters as opposed to a balanced equality of 3 to three, and making it into a ratio of 3:2.

Yet, doesn’t the essence of X require the need for an antonym to exist in order for a contrast to magnify the truth of it?  Thus do opposites enhance each other – does “Being” make any sense without “Nothingness?”  Would “happiness” have an existential sense without “sadness”?  In that logical entrapment, doesn’t the essence of being “human” require, by logical necessity and extension, the capacity to act its opposite – of cruelty, inhumanity, genocidal tendencies and masochistic egoism of the highest order?

That is the unfortunate reflection of reality from the refraction of a word; being “human” does not necessarily compute to being “humane”, although its opposite is apparently not true – if one is “humane”, one necessarily posits that the active agent of such empathy, caring and sensitive treatment is that of a “human”, and not some other species of animal that can exhibit such a trait.  But is this true in all cases?  Do we not witness “humane” treatment by others – by dogs, cats and pigs, perhaps?  Or do we attribute other characteristics to explain away such behavior – such as “loyalty”, “habit” or “trained behaviors”?

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, “humane” treatment by other “humans” is often sorely lacking.  What is it about having a medical condition that somehow brings out the worst in others?  Is it a fear that such a condition reflects a future reality that others see and want to avoid, and therefore begin to treat the person who possesses it like a plague of some short?

Agencies are supposed to treat workers with identified medical conditions in a “humane” way and, if they do not, there are laws concerning the requirement to “accommodate” in place; and, if there are no accommodations, then preparing an OPM Disability Retirement application is the next “humane” law that is there for the human being beset with a medical condition.

That is the peculiarity of laws, of course – they are passed by humans with the knowledge that they do not always engage in humane treatment, and that is why laws governing Federal Disability Retirement are there to be applied – for the human who requires being forced to engage in humane treatment of others, precisely because humans have shown a consistency tendency in history to act inhumanely.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire
Postal & Federal Employee Attorney

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Giving lip service

What does it mean to merely give “lip service”?  Ultimately, it is the hypocrisy of committing to words the sincerity of inaction.  In other words, it is merely the utterance of words, with nothing to follow.  This is a society that speaks much, and does little.  We give lip service to the braggadocio of being a productive society, yet, concurrently admit to the massive loss of the manufacturing sector of our country.

Can a country whose primary essence is built upon a “service industry”, actually declare itself to be “productive”?  Can we truly instill fear and dread upon our enemies while simultaneously confessing that no ground troops will be deployed?  Can unmanned drones win wars?  Can we actually claim to have hundreds of “friends” if we have never met them, never been irritated by the subtleties of undesirable traits and personalities, yet have spats by mere tapping of the fingertips on a keyboard?

It is little wonder that we are a society of mere utterances, less action, and where words pile upon more words to voluminously detail the insincerity of the greater cumulative mountain of meaningless words.  Lip service is to promise the world and leave the scraps of society with mere leftovers.

Admiral Yamamoto was only half-right when he feared that, by successfully launching the sneak-attack upon Pearl Harbor which brought the United States into the Second World War, he had inadvertently awoken a sleeping giant; for, generations later, who remembers the words of the victors in the history of fallen empires, but the faint snoring of the giant gone back to sleep?

It is lip service we give, today, and the same we receive in return.  In a universe where language is both the essence of life, as well as the primary barrier to living it, the duality of clashing worlds where virtual reality dominates the phenomenology of currency, it is little wonder that we can, as a species, survive even a day.

What other animal turns to the technology of texting in the midst of an endangered life?  Of embracing an impotent shield of linguistic panorama when threat to safety prevails and calls upon the urgency of action?  Do other predators – and we are one, despite our denials by protecting endangered species who mirror our own violent history – scream when attacked, or do they growl with aggressive energy to compel our enemies to take heed?

Beware of the lip service, especially by those who would do us harm.

For Federal and Postal employees who begin the process of preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the inclination is to be “fair” and to inform one’s Federal Agency or the U.S. Postal Service of one’s “intentions” concerning the process; but such information prematurely disseminated may come back to haunt, and one must always be wary and cautious of inane platitudes from coworkers, supervisors and managers who are empowered to harm.

For, the passing comment made, and returned with the innocuousness rising to the level of inaction in the lip service of those who pretend to be friendly, may come back to haunt with an administrative sanction which does some actual harm in this world of virtual reality in a language-filled emptiness.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Other people’s misery

Why is it that the misery of others tends to soothe our own?  Yes, yes – we grant the common and appropriate responses of heartfelt empathy and facial frowns and perhaps even some tears; but in the end, is it because of the resulting comparative analysis – of a cold, rational and logical methodology of responsive behavior – that we appease the gods of fate in some primitive form of sacrificing others, knowing that so long as the traveling karma has not yet noticed our own plight of devious accord, we are safe for another day?

Or is there some false paradigm upon which most of us operate – that economic prosperity is based upon a limited “pie”, and we must take a set portion before it disappears, or protect the leftovers we have salvaged against the ravenous predators who seek to deprive; or that chance and statistical ascription of proportional divides mandate that there is only a predetermined reach of human misery on a macro-level, and so long as that preset number is satisfied, such tragedy of suffering will leave us untouched?

We certainly have a history of such mythological adherence; whether of man’s historical conduct by religious fervor and slaughter in the name of heavens unreached (which has still not quenched its thirsting pinnacle of folly, as current epics attest to), or in the silent quips and prayers uttered to protect ourselves from nature’s fury; we believe, somehow, that but for the grace granted by an unfathomable other, we would experience the plight of those whom we would rather avoid like the plague.  Or is it much more basic – somewhat like the epidemic which takes the life of another, and the thought is, so long as the infectious predator busily devours and destroys the next guy, you are immune to its distracted attention?

We certainly find relief, and even enjoy the consternation of discussion, in other people’s misery; to stand around and about gossiping of trials and heartaches inflicted (with the distinction appropriated that, because the point of such exchanges are meant to be “helpful”, so the difference between “malicious gossip” and what we engage in must by definition allow for the momentary lapse from decorum) upon “poor Joe” or “Aunt Emma”, all the while making sure that the concealing mask bordering upon frowns and distraught distractions would not betray the sense of relief felt that it is the “other” guy whose misery remains.

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 positional duties, the thing that must be known and recognized at the outset is that the human need to embrace, discuss and “do something about” other people’s misery, is that the “other” person is you.  Thus, whether in a small department or a larger agency where anonymity prevails, or in a small post office or larger postal facility, the gossip which runs throughout will be like an untamed fire where no amount of extinguishers will control the spreading of it.

Preparing, formulating and 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 the only way to control the discussion of that which once was the subject of another, when the “other” of other people’s misery becomes the object directed at you.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: The pendulum swing

Time used to “march on”, and the pendulum swing was a metaphor which everyone understood.  No more.  The digital age of technological superiority has made such inane profundities left stacked upon the history of obsolescence.  But for cherished grandfather clocks in hallways of mansions forgotten, or in the mysteries of worn novels where the tick-tock represented the anticipation of the sudden death scream; the slow, mechanical device which moves to and fro, left to right, right to left, and into the eternal progression of marked time, is but an irritant for the noise it makes.

Have we outlasted the utility of mechanical complexity?  Does the software program in which we see nothing but an algorithm of undecipherable content ever transcend the fascination we glean from springs, weights and mechanisms of human innovation?

The time piece too heavy to carry about, yet never replaced the pocket watch transferred with generational delight, and reflected the craftsman’s care in perfecting the soul of a person’s worth.  Somehow, the digital face of a blinking light flashing when the electrical surge fails to protect, is not the same as the quiet peace of an undisturbed house when the pendulum ceases to swing because the owner forgot to adjust the weights.  And history now forgets, too, doesn’t it?

Are we at the far side of the extreme, never to swing back, because there is no pendulum to remind us?  Can the death of the clockmaker mean the end of reason and compromise, because there is no metaphor to realize, anymore?  We tend to believe that such metaphors follow upon a literary device of recognizing something more than the mere fodder of mechanical devices; but what if the opposite were true – that the cadence of history required the invention of the pendulum itself, and the stoppage of such back-and-forth, to-and-fro means that only the extremes of disproportionate swings will remain frozen as the epicenter of man’s egregious faults?

We assume much; and when we presume to follow history’s dialectical progression without considering the actions within our own willpower, Nietzsche’s eternal return to the bosom of our follies will surely unravel and reveal itself in the face of our reflected foolishness.  And so, as the proverbial pendulum has stopped, stuck in the timeless middle of muddled quietude, so the failure to make any progress in our own personal lives will be another lost metaphor in the eternal dustbin of forgotten concerns.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal Workers who want to break the cycle of being stuck perennially in the quicksand of mediocrity, it may be the ripened time to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether you are under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.  For, as time fails to move without the movement of objects surrounding, so the human frailty of non-movement and inertia is a broken mechanism deep in the recesses of the human heart.

Taking the next step – any step – in filing for Federal Employee Disability Retirement benefits with OPM, is at least a slight movement, a reverberation, of that time harkening for the pendulum to swing back to its proper place of origin.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: Of August Reminders

As an adjective, the accent is placed upon the second syllable, and recalls of supreme dignity and grandeur, with images of a Roman Centurion with his breastplate shining in the full sun of power and prestige.  As a noun, it is the doldrums of the eighth month, but where a breath of coolness always invades and reminds us of the possibilities, and of the coming winter still to arrive.

The inflection upon the first syllable makes all the difference; yet, the word remains the same, and only the harkening echo of a meaning concealed by mere intonation of voice.  What reminds of possibilities yet to be revealed?  Do smells, sounds and memories of potentialities unseen but foretold by parents, uncles and relatives, of the limitless anticipation of a world still before us?  Or of that cool respite, when the heat of summer turns suddenly a winter’s reminder, and allows us to bask in the sweat of our own memories, when toil was but a lazy dream in the midst of shadows by the stream’s edge?

There are times in life when possibilities seem endless, and the potentiality for happiness, joy, and sheer pleasure are limitless but for the darkness of our inner essences; when childhood memories once granted the wishes of a butterfly’s dream, and love was still the scent of flowers yet blooming in the valley below. But life tends to intrude and intercede; interruptions of august dreams in the doldrums of August nights; but for us, dreams are the escape from the reality of today, where tomorrow only brings sorrows but for lonely nights where the unity of solitude interrupts the daily grind of reality.

We never could precisely pinpoint when childhood ended; only, that adulthood “is”, and forever was.  Those summer dreams when the first kiss awoke our inner stirrings; when innocence was lost forever; and, somehow, we grew up with august reminders in those lazy August days when the fireflies died, and darkness enveloped the universe of possibilities.  There will still be days when we believe in ourselves; but as lives pass by, we watch and listen, and rarely see.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who feel the heat of summer’s suffocating dawns, those few days when the blast of reminders come our way, we relish and believe that the August doldrums are now behind us, only to realized that the days ahead will still embrace the sweat and toil of endless streams of treadmill repetitions.

When a medical condition begins to prevent the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal worker’s positional duties, it is time to harken back to the days when august thoughts pervaded, and leave behind the August doldrums of sweat-filled concerns.  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 often the best option left as a reminder that August is the month of possibilities yet unfulfilled, and where august thoughts must emphasize the syllable following the doldrums of past reflections.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire