Federal & Postal Employee Disability Retirement: History and Evidence

There is much debate these days about history, revisionism, and the bias inherent in past historical analysis, and the foundation-shaking changes in the world of academia — specifically in the History Department — is an interesting phenomena to witness.

“History” has often been seen as the narrative told by the “winners” and conquerors.  Who tells it; how it is told; from whose perspective; which information is magnified and which is minimized; what should be relegated to footnotes and after-notes — these all comprise the “objectivity” of a historical narrative.

Is it, for example, “revisionism” to include more prominently the “dark side” of history?  In a strict sense, it is — for “revisionism” means to “revise”, for what reasons: Of new information previously undiscovered; of a previously acknowledged and recognized inherent biased view needing correction; of pertinent historical facts previously ignored; and even of factual material deliberately distorted.

History is an exciting field; one which is necessary to a nation’s narrative and perspective of itself; and what story is told, how it is told, and the quality of the material gathered and disseminated — all are important in the telling of a nation’s story, and revisionism should always be an integral part of it — of revising for purposes of accuracy and proper perspective, based upon the evidence available.

We should never fear revisionism based upon integrity, but should celebrate and embrace it.

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 — some history is important: History of one’s performance; history of one’s medical condition; history of the interplay between evidence and personal experience.

Contact a Federal Disability Lawyer, that is, one who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and begin the process of preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, where history and evidence coincide to create the most effective narrative possible.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

Best Federal Disability Retirement Lawyer Near Me: Rhythms & Spasms

There is a difference between the two, isn’t there?  The musical form — the rhythm of life — is where all of the “instruments” cohere and coalesce; and even if one never learns how to play a musical instrument, there is an innate sense of distinguishing harmony as opposed to the out-of-step screech of a trumpet, trombone or guitar in the interrupted rhythm of life’s stretches.

And those spasms — of a sudden vibration — which are not quite the same as the rhythm of life’s incessant challenges.

We all experience both — of a stretch of rhythmic harmony, interrupted by a short spasm which spells of trouble.  The key is to figure out how to endure the spasms and get back on track with the rhythmic harmony one knows is there.

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, filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement under FERS, with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is the rhythmic solution out of the spasm of life’s difficulties.

Contact a Federal Disability Lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and consider the rhythm of the future as opposed to the current spasm of an inharmonious present.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer
OPM Disability Retirement Lawyer

 

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: Spam

If you remember eating it as a kid, it “dates” you — for, who in this day and age eats something that is singularly unhealthy, contains high levels of fats, calories and sodium, as well as unnamed preservatives?  On the other hand, the younger generation doesn’t blink an eye, and instead sees the word as a forgotten acronym for “junk email”, or otherwise known as “unsolicited commercial email”.

Are the two related?  Can there be a coincidence between a word which has two meanings or more, but contains some similarities and parallels?

Spam as a commercial yummy — oh, but of those memories when the can is first opened, of using that metal “key” where you insert the “thingie” and roll back the metal strip; and upon opening the can, the thick fat that surrounds in globs of hibernating hews of highlights hidden amidst the green shadows of delectable delights.  Spam as unsolicited commercial email — oh, but how that folder fills up so quickly, and yet do we nevertheless obsessively check each one “just in case” it was mistakenly misidentified and sent to the wrong folder?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who cross over generational lines — of whether you remember the word as the delectable blob of pork making its popularity entrance sometime after WWII, or of the “new” generation who makes the connection to unsolicited commercial emails — if a medical condition begins to prevent you from performing one or more of the essential elements of your job, you may want to consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Spam is a reality of life; medical conditions, too, occur and become an unavoidable reality; and whether of either reality that uninvitedly intrudes upon your life, it the next step beyond that a person takes which is the important moment of actionable directions.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Return to Who I Am

We all take on different roles — whether as a parent, a husband, a wife; of assuming the role each day of a supervisor, a worker, a doctor, lawyer, etc. The underlying “substratum” of the “I” is presumed to remain the same throughout, but there may be a difference in the character posed, the personality posited or the tone, tonality and tenor of a voice, inflection, the way you talk, etc.

Perhaps, on a “Take your child to work day” you bring along your son or daughter and he or she watches you work in a particular role. Afterwards, does the child think to himself — or express him or herself to you or some third person — and say: “Gee, Mom [or Dad] sure acts differently at the office.”

Actors and actresses take on a “double-role” of sorts, don’t they? They not only have to take on the role of a character, whether in a play or a part in a filmed venue, but moreover, to “become” someone other than the person Who I Am.

Is there a difference between “Assuming the role of an Accountant” and “Playing the role of an Accountant”? Certainly, the former must have some credentials — perhaps as a C.P.A. or some “financial consultant certificate”, or some degree in accounting — whereas the latter only has to “act like” he or she has merited such a status. And the clients who come to the former — they are presumably “real” people whose financial problems or quandaries are “real” as well, whereas in the “acting’ role, they are not real, per se, but are also assuming the role of a part for the sake of an audience.

In either and both cases — whether of being “real” or “acting” in a role — the person to whom one “returns to” is someone who is the substratum: For the child, it is “Mommy” or “Daddy”; for the spouse, it is the husband or wife who “went-to-work-and-is-now-home”; and for the life-long friend from childhood days, it may be “Oh, that’s Dan who works as such-and-such, but who is good ol’ Dan always and forever.” But whatever role one assumes in life, whenever he or she returns to that person “Who I am”, does he or she ever return as the same person, or is there always a slight difference?

For, whatever the experience encountered in the “role” one plays, doesn’t it always change the person such that the person to whom one returns to can never be quite the same as before?

That is what happens with the Federal or Postal employee who needs to file for FERS Disability Retirement benefits — Yes, the point of trying to overcome a medical condition is so that one can “return to who I am”; but in reality, that will never happen, precisely because the medical condition and the experience of enduring the medical condition has changed the person forever.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement Benefits: The Unique Writer

These days, writers are plentiful; more and more people are publishing, and while “self-publishing” has become more acceptable, even the quantity of people writing books, novels, narratives, biographies, autobiographical works, self-help books and allegedly adventuresome travelogues portending to unique experiences has exponentially exploded in our times.

Decades ago, there were only a handful of writers, and only the top-notch and exceptional ones actually got published.  Now, it seems that anyone and everyone who can articulate a string of three or more words — a noun, an adjective and a verb combined — can get published.  But we all know that in some desolate town in the Midwest there remains a warehouse where books unsold and unbought remain in molded stacks upon forgotten pallets where once-vaunted “bestsellers” became price-reduced, then slashed, then almost given away for free — until it became clear that no one was interested and even less people were persuaded of their merit.

Then, every now and again, the “unique writer” comes along, and we are again apprised of extraordinary talent and impressed with his or her articulateness, insightfulness and provocative profundity.

The unique writer is the one who is able to combine multiple characteristics: articulation with clarity; the capacity to simplify the complex; to convey clear and concise imagery; to hold the interest of the reader despite descriptions of the mundane; to not come off sounding pretentious and arrogant; and to remain anonymous behind a facade of competence — like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain — and, above all else, to show an interest in all things about life, living and the human experience.  In other words, to always hold a childlike quality of curiosity through the vast aggregate of verbiage expounded.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that filing for FERS Disability Retirement becomes a necessity, the first recognition to observe is that a Federal Employee Disability Retirement application is a “paper presentation” to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Make sure that, however you approach your case, you are able to convey properly, effectively and with forceful persuasiveness your case, your condition and your plight in a manner that will result in an approval, and consult with a Federal Disability Retirement Attorney who is somewhat like that “unique writer” who can articulate and convey your conditions effectively.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire 
OPM Disability Retirement Lawyer

 

Medical Retirement under FERS & CSRS: This upside down world

How many whistleblowers would do it all over again?  How many regrets does it take to screw in a lightbulb?  The answer: Few as to the first question, and at least a dozen in response to the second.  For, as to the second query, while one person engages in the mechanical act of lighting up the room, it takes all of the others to fail to assuage the regrets of a person who has tried to do the rights thing, and has lived to suffer the consequences.

We grow up being taught all sorts of empty adages — how “truth reveals all”, or that “justice prevails in the end”; and though the old hero of simplicity has now been replaced by more “complex” characters of mixed good/bad/neutral, still the naïveté of childhood upbringings tend to haunt beyond the loss of innocence delayed.

This is an upside down world where the clear-cut demarcations that once were inviolable have now become obscured, and where leaders can argue with a straight face any and all positions, whether self-contradictory, hypocritical or just plain nonsense, and can get away with it without any regrets or loss of sleep.  Perhaps it has always been like that and we just didn’t realize it.  The wealthy have always been able to get away with more; the powerful, without much consequences; and when the combination of wealth and power become aggregated, there is little to impose any checks and balances that might have tempered the onslaught of injustice.

For the Federal employee and the U.S. Postal worker who suffers from a medical condition, where the medical condition begins to prevent the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the fact that we live in an upside down world becomes exponentially the case because of the medical condition itself.

Progressive deterioration and chronic debilitation are often the rule of a medical condition, and just to survive another day without pain, without emotional or mental anguish — these are the hallmarks of needing to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

The world is about as topsy-turvy as it can get; but when the private world of one’s health begins to deteriorate, that upside down world becomes a tumultuous maze of a conundrum wrapped within an insanity that cannot be escaped from, and that is when you know that preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application becomes a necessity in a universe that requires some wisdom, and turning to the advice of an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement is often the first step in providing a balanced perspective within this upside down world.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement under FERS & CSRS: Wants and needs

One often encounters such discussions, about the difference between “wants” and “needs”.  Needs are dictated by a loose definition of survival or existence — that which is required by or necessitated of the things which satisfy the criteria for continued existence or maintaining of a given modality of the status quo.  The other — “wants” — are defined as those “extras” that are not required for existence, but go beyond the prerequisite for survival and add to the comfort and meaningfulness of one’s very existence and survival.

There is always a grey area between the two when one engages anyone in a discussion involving the two — and it often depends upon the paradigm and perspective one takes, which leads to conclusions not only about the subject concerning wants and needs, but also about one’s own character, upbringing and attitude towards life in general.

Take the perspective of a member of the British Royal Family, for example — of a person who knows of existence entirely from the perspective of wealth, privilege and undiminished wants and needs.  Such a person will often have a widely differing view of the distinction between the two, in contradistinction to a person born in the ghettos of an inner city, whether here in the United States or of more underdeveloped countries elsewhere.

Can one who has never lacked for needs, or even of wants, recognize the objective criteria that determines the differences between the two?  In other words, can the poor person even have a logical discussion with a wealthy person by pointing out that food is an example of “need”, as opposed to a Ferrari being merely a “want”?  Or, will the member of the Royal Family retort with, “Well, yes, I can see how cheap caviar of a subpar quality could be a need as opposed to wanting a Rolls Royce.”

Such a response, of course, tells one immediately that there will be a difficult road ahead in attempting the bridge the gap between understanding, comprehension and the art of logic and discussion.  What we want, we often do not need; and what we need, we merely want for want of sufficiency.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who want to continue their careers despite a medical condition that prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, will often cross the threshold between wants and needs.

You may want to extend your career, but need to end it because of your medical condition.  Your agency may want to be compassionate, but may need to follow directives from above.  You may want to remain, but need to depart.  The conflict between wants and needs is one of life’s ongoing clashes between the two, and preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed through OPM, may need to be initiated in order to satisfy the ultimate need of one’s existence: The need to want to look after one’s health.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: The perfect person

By all accounts, he or she doesn’t exist, except perhaps in theoretical constructs of theological paradigms; and of academia, where one may argue some alternate version of Anselm’s argument by positing that, because the concept of perfection could not be thought of without the reality of a Being constituting perfection, ergo a perfect Being – God – must by necessity exist.

Yet, we live “as if” the perfect person exists – either imposing such a standard unknowingly, unwittingly and unwillingly upon our own selves, or by thinking that movie characters actually exist somewhere in the ephemeral world of Hollywood, Instagram and Facebook concoctions that only put forward to the public’s eye the image of perfection.

We overlook the distorted concept of perfection when we say of a movie character, “Oh, he’s not perfect; he drinks too much, cheats on his spouse and is violent.”  Yet, the make-believe character still solves the mystery, is philosophically coherent when drunk, and somehow remains an attractive character despite all such character flaws.  In other words, despite the appearance of flaws, we make gods of characters we create.

It is the same on the Internet – despite the knowledge by all that there does not exist the perfect person, nevertheless, we allow for Facebook postings and Instagram photographs of meals, dogs, kids, families, selves and neighborhoods as the perfect depiction of unblemished lives.  And of ourselves, perhaps the greatest of culprits alive – for perpetuating the mythological depiction by engaging in the flim-flam of projecting the existence of the perfect person.

Yet, what is the alternative?  No one wants to hear the perpetual whining of the constant apologist – that person who points out his own failures and shortcomings at the drop of the proverbial hat; of he who apologizes for the slightest of errors, the scent of a mistake and a hint of failure to reach perfection.  Name a movie character or a movie, excepting a comedy, where the character is merely a bundle of imperfections and unattractive to boot.  Even Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther series, played long ago by Peter Sellers and by others more recently, captured the culprit in the end, despite all of the blunders and pitfalls.

In the end, we all participate in the grand larceny of perpetuating the existence of the perfect person – until we are hit with a medical condition, and the façade then suddenly falls apart.  Yet, everyone else continues in the charade.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who can no longer keep up with the make-believe world of the perfect person because of a medical condition, where the medical condition prevents the appearance of the perfect person to perform all of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal job, it may be time to admit imperfection by preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted ultimately to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the imperfect Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

For, in the end, it is the perfect person who embraces the imperfection of this world, and that is at least a beginning for the Federal or Postal employee who must continue to face the Federal Agency or the Postal Service in facing the reality of living imperfectly in this all too perfect universe.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: The Happiness Goal

Whether human happiness is the goal to strive for, or as a byproduct to savor in those moments of sudden revelation, is for each individual to ascertain and abide by.  One can study the sages and philosophers and realize that there is a distinction to be made between joy and happiness, of contentment and satisfaction, and from a sense of peace as opposed to the turmoil of anxious foreboding.

Life is full of moments; but is it for those moments we live, or do such ethereal segments compel us to greater achievements?  From Aristotle’s Eudaemonism to Confucius’ focus upon maintaining the balance between family and normative behavior, or the extreme nihilism of Nietzsche and the existentialist’s embrace of the absurd, the modern approach has been to ensconce happiness as the principle of highest regard.  But life has a way of interrupting every neat packaging of human endeavor.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, whether of physical pain, the chronicity of progressive deterioration, or the overwhelming psychiatric conditions which impact mental acuity, cognition, with symptoms of depression, anxiety, panic attacks, etc., the desire for the “happiness principle” is sometimes merely to have a day without the symptoms of one’s medical condition.

Filing for Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal workers is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, can be an intermediate goal, and not an “ultimate” one.  For, in the end, if the Federal or Postal employee can no longer perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties, the loss of job satisfaction will be exponentially heightened either by the agency (through disciplinary procedures or termination of employment) or by one’s self (through frustration of purpose, increasing recognition and acknowledgment of one’s inability and incapacity, etc.).

In the end, the “happiness goal” is often defined by who controls what; and in taking the first steps toward preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through OPM, one asserts control over one’s present and future endeavors, and fights against the winds of time and mortality by controlling the undetermined destiny of a period of life yet to be deciphered in this complex world of mysteries wrapped in a chasm of conundrums.

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