FERS Medical Disability Retirement: Avoiding Time Bandits

We all know what they are.  They are little men and women in pirate suits who sneak around and steal the most valuable commodity anyone possesses.  Like hobbits, they used to walk around freely and openly, but as society banished the mystical and no longer believed in the mythological, they took to hiding in the forests and sneaking about behind furniture, the television set, the computer and even sometimes disappearing in our Smart Phones.

Time bandits are those ephemeral metamorphic creatures who suddenly appear, steal our time, and disappear without guilt or conscience bothered.  Medical conditions are one such form of a time bandit.  They come into our lives and steal away not only our time, but our energy, our talents, our mental and physical capacities — without remorse, discrimination or bias.  They care not about race, gender or sexual orientation; just about making miserable an already stressed-out life.

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, contact an experienced Federal Disability Retirement Lawyer to consider filing for OPM Disability Retirement benefits.  It is one way of avoiding time bandits and to exterminate those pesky creatures who visit us from the faraway places of hobbit land.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS Disability Retirement for Federal Government Employees: Lost

Is it a feeling; an emotion; a state of being; or merely a fact?  Or, can it be “all of the above”?  Can one say, for example, “I feel lost” — but yet be in one’s home or in other familiar surroundings?  Is it an emotion — like sadness or joy, but instead having the emotion of “lostness”?

It can certainly be a state of being; and there is no question that the statement, “I am lost”, can be a factual assertion where one is wandering through an unfamiliar city and you stop and say to a bystander, “Excuse, but I am new to this city and I am lost.  Can you help me?”

The latter of these examples, of course, is the more uninteresting; the first or second in this series, a conundrum that makes one pause.  When we experience the feeling or emotion, however, it is far from anything obscure or nebulous; we actually can, and do, experience a sensation of “being lost” — just not in a geographical or “factual” manner.

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 natural to feel “lost” when confronted with the prospect of preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application with OPM (the acronym standing for The U.S. Office of Personnel Management).

Consult with a Federal Disability Retirement Attorney, who can guide you through the maze of confusion, whether “being lost” is an emotion, a feeling, a state of being — or merely a fact.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS Disability Retirement from the OPM: Perfect Sequence

But that life could mimic the perfect sequence; but rarely does it reflect perfection.  It is well that human beings have short memories; the famous adage that one needs to learn from history, lest the tragedy that will occur of repeating it — is a lesson never learned, because each generation believes itself to be superior to the previous one, more wise, more learned; arrogant to a fault.

And how would we know what the perfect sequence would be, when we know not what perfection itself is?

That is the argument, of course, for the existence of a transcendent being: That because we possess a conception of perfection, but we ourselves are imperfect beings; therefore, there must be a God in order for an imperfect being to have a conception of perfection.  But real life rarely works that way; and so we muddle along in imperfect ways, failing to achieve any level of perfection, generation after tired generations; degenerating into a muddle of imperfections.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that this condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application requires engaging in a sequence of formulations.  No case can encapsulate a perfection of sequences, but one can certainly come close.

Being an imperfect being, it is important to consult with a Federal Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law in order to reach — as closely as possible — a perfection of sequences in maneuvering the complex bureaucratic process of Federal Disability Retirement Law.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement for FERS Federal Employees: To Feign Normalcy

What a strange concept; and stranger still, that so many people must actually engage in it.  It can occur and be implemented in variegated circumstances: Of having done something which impels a guilty conscience, but being forced to act “as if” everything is fine; of being with someone you would rather not be with, but pretending that all is well; or even of having a tragedy occur but, because public conventions require an unemotional facade, to paint that “brave face” and enter the public arena.

Do other species engage in it?  Does a lion who prowls about nonchalantly (but whose inner motivation is to find its prey and chase it for its dinner meal) “feign normalcy”?  Does a dog who desires a treat but knows that begging too vociferously will receive an admonition as opposed to the intended outcome, “feign normalcy”? (Yes, because I know that my own dog does that).

And what about the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker who suffers from a medical condition, cannot perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s job and must come in to work because the Agency or Postal Service will not extend his or her LWOP beyond what the FMLA allows for — does he or she “feign normalcy” despite the pain or anxiety experienced?

For Federal employees or 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 job, it may be time to consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.

For, to “feign normalcy” is simply another way of realizing that things are not normal, and the “feigning” engaged in is another layer of trying to fool one’s self, one’s body and/or one’s mind into “thinking” that everything is alright, when in fact it is the underlying condition which must be attended to — and that, in fact, is the really normal thing to do, instead of pretending that the abnormal is the normal.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Information: The unknown

What is it about “the unknown” that terrifies us?  Is it merely from the stories of childhood that kept us up late into the night with limbs and face under the heavy blankets, hoping that those goblins wouldn’t suddenly pounce upon the flesh that remained uncovered, with sweat and suffocation preferable to the gnawing of a hungry predator?

Or from insecurities that remained despite the best efforts from parents who were clueless but wanted a dissimilar approach from their own childhoods; yet, despite those efforts to “never be like my mom and dad”, such exertions were merely untested applications from tentative and unlearned methodologies, leaving the insecurities manifesting through thoughtless hesitations because no one knows what they are doing?

The unknown is always, by definition, an uncertainty, and thus a conundrum that instills fear, prefatory pause and trembling of confidence.

When a medical condition enters into the picture as a factor to contend with, the unknown becomes a depth of fear and loathing, precisely because there can never be concretized stability within a wrapping of the unknown.  Suddenly, with the medical condition present, the unknown becomes an uncertainty; the uncertainty compels anxiety and an angst that cannot be controlled.

People enjoy watching horror shows and movies depicting the supernatural; of monsters and goblins that suddenly pop up from nowhere and frighten; because, once removed as a spectator who can fear and yet know simultaneously that you are merely an observer of the horror and mayhem, the fear of the unknown is recognized in the third person, and therefore separable enough from the reality of the virtual.

When one suffers from a medical condition, however, the observer and the sufferer become one and the same, inseparable, unable to merely act as a dispassionate spectator.

For Federal and 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 unknown is the uncertainty of a future undetermined.

Thus, what needs to be focused upon is what is known, and let the unknown unravel — by preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, so that the Federal or Postal worker suffering from a medical condition can focus upon the known quantities of life: One’s health, one’s happiness, and the present circumstances that cannot continue perpetually into the future.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill
Federal Disability Lawyer

 

Medical Retirement under FERS & CSRS: The distant bark

A lone dog barks in the distance.  We cannot determine where, or even from what direction, but the echo of wailing, sometimes of whimpering, reverberates like a mist in the early morning that quietly pervades but can never be grasped.  Perhaps it persists, and we leave the safety of our own home in search of the cry, as the forlorn sounds made wavers between a spectrum of hurt, pain, loneliness or urgency of need; no matter the reason, the bark is desperate.

We begin the journey in one direction, but suddenly the winds of voices heard shifts, and we believe it may be coming from a completely different direction.  We shift course and walk in the exact opposite direction. The barking continues, now with greater tones of reverberating alarm, drifting from over there, somewhere out there, never to be determined.  The barking stops.  You pause, listen; but only the quietude of the midnight air breaks the stillness of the echo that now sounds within one’s imagination.

You begin to doubt yourself; was it my own fears, my own fantasy?  Did the sound ever break upon the dawn of objective reality, or was it something that originated from deep within my own needs and wants?  You go home.  Then, a few minutes later, after turning off the lights and drifting off into the slumber of night’s call, a lone dog barks in the distance.

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 the Federal or Postal job, that Federal or Postal employee is the distant bark, and the help that never arrives reflects the situation that so often describes the events that unfold.  Federal Disability Retirement, as the analogy may be stretched, is the person who reaches out to try and find the source of the barking.  Failing to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits is the metaphor where the searching man and the barking dog never meet.

Federal Disability Retirement is not just another “benefit” or a “give-away”; rather, it is part of the employment package that the Federal or Postal worker signed on to, and once obtained, allows for the Federal or Postal worker who is on disability retirement to pursue other careers and vocations, and more importantly, to focus upon regaining one’s health in the process by being separated from the work that has become problematic in the meantime.

And like the lone dog that barks in the distance, the Federal or Postal employee who fails to take the next step by not preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, will end up like the dog that wails pitifully deep into the recesses of midnight regrets.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Disability Retirement under FERS & CSRS: Ordered lives

There is, first of all, chaos and disarray; and whether from a biblical worldview or the natural paradigm of a universe formed from a massive energy source that exploded with such force as to hurl a spinning residue of astronomical proportions into far galaxies that resulted in the starry heavens we witness today; it is from the opposite of a placid tranquility that we experience the ordered lives of everyday existence.

There are, of course, the extremes of the spectrum – of that person who is obsessive and compulsive about the “ordering” of one’s life, where every teacup and saucer must be placed in the cupboard within precise millimeters of one another, and no angle of a picture on a wall must be allowed to circumvent the geometric consistency with the right angles of the corners; or, by contrast, the slob who believes that pants, plants, underwear and empty pizza boxes belong in the same corner of the bedroom as expensive china and puppies who snuggle in bathroom showers.

Somewhere in between the two extremes upon the spectrum of life, exists the ordinary person of ordinary means, who wakes up each ordinary morning to go about in ordinary ways; all within the constraints of ordered lives.  All, or most of us, like, enjoy and look forward to some semblance of order in our lives.

Chaos is good for an exciting moment; monotony of discourse for the rest of the day requires that sanity mandates a certain sequence of events, and that is why dystopian stories of a universe in disarray after a nuclear war or some other disastrous consequence of political missteps left in the hands of incompetent world leaders allows for small-budget films to be successful in scaring the hell out of us all.

Divorce, death, illness and tragedies disrupt the otherwise sought-after ordering of lives left peaceful; medical conditions tend to do that, don’t they?  They interrupt the tranquility that we so seek with quiet resolve; and then the medical condition becomes a chronic state of existence, and more than just a nuisance, they interrupt our plans, our hopes, and the essence of our ordered lives.

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 the Federal or Postal employee’s ability and capacity to perform the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the interruption that ensues from the disruption of a medical condition, resulting in the breaking up of one’s ordered life, often comes to a point where consideration must be given to filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.

It is an employment benefit that is “there” for Federal and Postal employees who can no longer perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties.  And, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the time to consider preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits may come at a time when the previous state of ordered lives is sought after again, if only to reach a destination where chaos is no longer the new norm of everyday existence.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: How truly ordinary we are

Every now and again, someone will make that inane statement that seems to fly by in a discourse of overwhelming linguistic overcrowding of so many such pearls of wisdom:  “Oh, we’re all just human.”  Is it a logical tautology in a strict sense?  The “we” referred to is obviously a subject which includes individual human beings; the “human” described and identified, is the same as the “we” previously posited.  So, it is the same as saying:  “Oh, humans are all just human.”

If that were said, instead, would we not turn with a puzzled look of suspicion, as if the statement made was uttered in such a nonsensical term that the meeting of eyes would, or at least should, erupt with uncontrollable laughter like two hyenas cackling at the full moon?  Or, despite the inane nature of meaninglessness, do we all have a shared cultural norm of language, such that we recognize and comprehend such statements?  For, the sentence itself evokes meanings of shared belief: We are all less than perfect; Don’t worry about it, we all do that from time to time; The ordinariness of human frailty allows for each to give another the benefit of the doubt.

It also points to a slightly deeper meaning:  That, in our humanity, how truly ordinary we are.  Yet, isn’t that very ordinariness that which allows for the shared commonality of community?  The fact that we are ordinary is precisely what allows us all to “fit in”, and concurrently, touches upon that darker side of human nature to spur cruelty, arrogance, superiority and disdain.  For, it is the Darwinian predisposition to conquer and defeat, of “showing up” everyone else that we are what we are not created as – being ordinary.

That is why, when a medical condition is revealed, it is the weakness and the vulnerability that suddenly causes others to shy away, to shun, and to harass and prey upon.  Our ordinariness, in combination with the scientifically and anthropologically explained behavior traits of “survival instincts” and aggressive, predatory inclinations, somewhat defines why we are who we are and how, in a society that supposedly advances continually, we still revert back to your roots of caveman-like follies.

Medical conditions depict our ordinariness.  Manifested medical conditions attract the predatory inclinations within, like predisposed genetic and cellular triggers that cannot be stopped.

That is what Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition triggers a need to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, need to understand:  That we our human; our humanness reveals vulnerabilities; that such vulnerabilities will manifest themselves in quite ordinary revelations, including medical conditions; and, once medical conditions are revealed, it will likely trigger aggressive and predatory reactions, and attract those very hominids who, by Darwinian triggers of genetic predispositions, will react in an attempt to rise above our humanity.

Agencies act that way; the U.S. Postal Service certainly treats it employees in that thread of behavioral responsiveness.  For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers, keep in mind that, in filing a Federal Disability Retirement application, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, how truly ordinary we are is merely another way of recognizing that not only are we just human, but we can also reveal that dark side inherent in all in the rise to subvert just how truly ordinary we are, which only further uncovers how truly ordinary they are, as well.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Disability Retirement for Federal & Postal Employees: Clarity of purpose

It is always a burden when the passageway beyond is a mist of obscurity.  It helps to possess it, even in partial shades of inane generalizations; but lack of it, especially in youth, is neither a crime nor a blot of misdeeds upon one’s reputation so early in a life or career.  We have known them, whether as a “type” or an individual; that rarity of endangered species where the target-point of life is an unwavering straight line directly from birth to death (or at least for the moment when a career goal is sought).

Clarity of purpose is something one “ought” to have, but rarely manifested in the lives of ordinary people.  We talk of a nation’s “manifest destiny”, or of the importance of having some “foundation” in life; of faith, purpose and a desire or motivation to – what?  That is often the problem; not so much that we have no purpose in life, but that clarity of that essence is too often subverted by events unasked for and circumstances untold.

In W. Somerset Maugham’s novel, The Razor’s Edge, where Larry merely wants to “loaf” after his traumatic wartime experiences –  does lack of clarity of purpose as defined by conventional society evince a mere deviation of acceptable behavior, or constitute a complete violation and breach of man’s destined existence harkening from the residues of Puritanism and religiosity in general? (Note the comedic definition of Puritanism from H.L. Mencken:  “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy”).

Modernity no longer believes in destiny, fate, or purposeful existence; and thus do we lack great figures, anymore – as Churchill who consistently defied death in war because of an inherent belief that he was destined for greater things, and thus the gods would not dare to undermine that predetermined fate of life.  Instead, the insidiousness of Darwinian belief – a foundation where reductionism to pure materialism and life lived by sensation, pleasure and tactile responsiveness:  these are the purposeful endeavors for us all.  It is, however, still a requirement that, in order to reach a destination of accomplishment, we “clarify” the “purpose” for which we engage to act.

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 position, the need to define, refine and clarify such a purposive action is a crucial component in the successful formulation and filing of a Federal Disability Retirement application.

Wandering and meandering with merely a general sense of what needs to be done, like Larry Darrell’s search for meaning in Maugham’s masterpiece, will likely result in a denial by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.  There are legal statutes to consult; case-law that should be cited; and a streamlining of medical evidence in order to pinpoint, with circumscribed accuracy, the argument and methodology for approval of an OPM Disability Retirement application.

In sum, there needs to be a tactical and strategic clarity of purposive action throughout, in preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Medical Retirement from Federal Government Employment: Wars forgotten

We tend to believe that the wars we fight today will forever remain in the memories of future generations; and so we carry about us, in the universe of our own minds, an imprint of selective relevance, while all the time passing by buried encounters of past generations left in remains of this earth’s bosom.

How many pastures of hallowed grounds do we step upon each day, where centuries ago the Native American fought against a rival tribe?  Or in Europe, where fiefdoms were protectorates and knights battled with sabers drawn and armies vanquished?  But for ivory-tower historians who dig through the minutiae of battles in times forgotten, what wars are remembered excepting in the minds of loved ones left behind and old men and women shuttered in corners of traumatic memories once relevant, but now shelved as dusty remains in an uncaring universe?

Who remembers the Spanish Civil War (except, perhaps, the dying countrymen themselves) but through literary genres by Hemingway’s reportage, his classic novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and of Malraux’s participation and subsequent writings – all overshadowed by portending events just northeast in the dark cauldrons of Germany’s bestiality and the world marching towards a greater war?  And what of private wars – those within one’s own mind, or between neighbors, within marriages and among family members; do we too loosely bandy about such terms, or is it appropriate based upon the level of ferocity and the tactics used?

Perhaps you are sitting around with a group of friends or colleagues, and discussing irrelevant but fun topics of dystopian pastimes, as in, “What if Germany had won the war; what would this world be like today?” (Some would immediately contend, of course, that both Germany and Japan did indeed win their respective wars, ultimately – through economic dominance and rise of subsequent influence; and thus, to engage in hypotheticals is a meaningless exercise of embracing a virtual reality which has its parallel universe in reality, anyway).  But in the course of the conversation, an individual sitting morosely in the corner suddenly blurts out, “I was in the war of ___, and that is how I lost my leg – see!”

Would silence ensue, because the rules of the “fun” game were merely to engage in make-believe, and here was evidence of a warrior from a real war?  Or, given the same set of circumstances, one of the participants suddenly admits:  “I am fighting a war with my family.”  Would we take him seriously, or just ignore with aplomb and impassive expressions a deviation from the world of our own fantasies?

Wars forgotten – whether of unnamed tombstones or hallowed grounds overgrown with weeds and concrete buildings; or of private hells within the confines of one’s own mind; they are all “real” to the extent we remember, and vanish upon the last person who recalls.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must fight against the ongoing “wars” within agencies, and are forced to battle their own private hells because of medical conditions that impact the ability and capacity to perform the essential elements of one’s positional duties, the strategic move in 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 of CSRS Offset, may be the best way to move beyond the trench-warfare that one must engage in daily.

For, in the end, the wars forgotten are all advanced beyond by some movement forward – and for Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must get beyond the rut of this career, filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application is that final echo of a marching step advancing, in the constant and all-encompassing battles in those wars forgotten.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire