FERS Disability Retirement: The Acceleration Principle

In economics, the principle makes the logical connection between the demand for consumer goods and the requirement of accelerated production needs in order to meet the higher demand.  In other words, when the demand for consumer goods increases, it logically follows that the demand for equipment will accelerate because the means of production in order to meet the consumer demands will need to be fulfilled.

In a similar vein, there is a parallel principle in other sectors of life — educational acceleration of mediocrity, for example.  It would make sense that if a country’s educational system systematically reduces its standards of excellence, that as the years pass, everyone over time will be dumber because those students who go through the “system” and go on to become teachers, will teach the next generation of students at a reduced level of rigor, and the acceleration principle will come into play as each successive generation teaches the next at a dumbed-down level.

Similarly, wouldn’t this same principle be applicable in areas of reading, for example — where, a nation which reads less but expends a greater amount of time in watching videos, becoming entrenched in the virtual maze of computers and Smartphones, or in video games, etc., will accelerate into a population of illiteracy and cultural ineptitude?

How about in health — isn’t there a similar principle experienced, where being young can somewhat compensate for a chronic health condition, but where age or some traumatic event can trigger and accelerate the health condition where, heretofore, it had been somewhat managed and controlled?

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management, of course, will turn that on its head if you are not careful.  They will argue thus: You had a preexisting condition; there are no objective indicators that it worsened during your tenure as a Federal Employee.  Thus, your case is denied.  Contact a FERS Disability Lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and consider that the acceleration principle is both valid and effective, if delineated in the best and proper manner.

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.

 

FERS Disability Retirement: World as Field of Acting

The insular universe is one of consciousness, deliberation, thought and decision-making; and once we will ourselves to act, the action itself takes place in “the world” — and within that greater world, we have the capacity and potentiality of impacting the objective field, however limited, in some significant way.

Most of our lives are spent in mere thought.  Every now and again, we awaken from our slumber of this cocoon, wrapped in shards of considerations, deliberations, fears, emotional turmoil and constant upheavals in deciding or not deciding to engage this world.  But once the decision to act is made, the space between mere thought and movement of the body disappears — and then, of course, others can see what you are doing.

It is the hesitation between thought and act which often makes all of the difference in the world as field of acting — for, it is that very hesitation which determines the efficacy of one’s life.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have been hesitant about initiating the process of Federal Disability Retirement through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management under FERS, the world as field of acting should probably involve an initial consultation with a disability lawyer who understands not only the process of the bureaucracy, but moreover, the substantive basis of the law.

Contact a federal attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and begin the process of engaging with the world as field of acting.

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.

 

FERS Disability Retirement Benefits: Daily Concerns

Most of us are so focused upon our daily concerns that we have no time for the intermediate and long-term issues which are also important in maintaining a balanced and productive life.

We are so busy with living life — of just getting through the day, whether it is to make a living, performing our duties, fulfilling our obligations, or attending to the needs which require our full energies just for the period of time before our eyes; that, by the time the day ends, we are so exhausted that we have no time for anything else.

Technology was supposed to be the saving grace — of allowing for greater efficiency, thereby resulting in leisure time and greater focus upon creative pursuits.  Email; Smart Phones; the ability to work remotely; all of these were promises to enhance and enrich the life of modern man.  It turns out, however, that such technology merely forced upon us a greater quantity of daily concerns in a more intense, abbreviated manner.

We now have more things to do, but with greater immediacy, such that the daily concerns have squeezed out time-blocks of quietude and down-times.  Then, when a crisis hits — like a medical condition resulting in an inability to continue in one’s career — it merely becomes one more daily concern which replaces time needed to consider intermediate or long-term goals.

Contact a Federal Lawyer who specializes in Federal or Postal Disability Retirement Law if you are a Federal or Postal employee under FERS needing to consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.  For, the daily concerns of attending to your medical conditions should never squeeze out the time needed to secure Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS.

Leave the law to the expert who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and leave the daily concerns of your medical conditions to the doctors who are treating you.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill
Federal Disability Attorney

 

OPM Disability Retirement under FERS: The Fear of Meaninglessness

Our relevance is determined by others; meaning, by ourselves.  Some fear irrelevance; almost all, meaninglessness.  Whether we are truly relevant in our communities, our careers, our personal and professional lives — that is a question which is dependent upon what others think and do about our interactions with them.

The fear of relevance is often felt to a lesser extent, for we can fool ourselves into thinking that we are more relevant than we actually are.  The fear of meaninglessness, however, is a different matter.  “Meaning” relates to our own inner lives; of how we think of ourselves; of what value we attribute; the interests we have undertaken; the purpose we have shown.  The fear of meaninglessness is what compels us 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 employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the medical condition itself — in relation to one’s job — will intersect with questions of meaning and relevance.

Consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits — for, the fear of meaninglessness will become evident once you consider the priorities of your life, including your time remaining; the impact of your medical condition; what you want to do for the rest of your life.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS Disability Retirement: The Required Rhythm of Normalcy

When we break it, we become bombarded with looks of irritation, a pause filled with suspicious surprise.  The quick, “Good-to-see-you-hope-you’re-doing-well” is meant as a quick conveyance of polite nothingness, and is the throw-away line that allows for the rhythm of a quick-paced society to retain its fast-lane of existence.  You are not to respond except in a similarly empty manner, with a “Yes, nice-to-see-you-too”.  To break the rhythm of normalcy is to interrupt with a real response; to say something like, “Actually, I am not doing too well.  And since you have asked, let me tell you why…”.

Normalcy is the abnormal, and the norms and conventions that were once taken for granted have now been turned upside down and have become the abnormal, the irritating and the blade of rudeness.

In a time past and now gone for seemingly forever, there existed communities where people actually stopped and spoke to one another, showed some concern and exhibited some neighborly empathy.  In modernity, we hide within the barricaded walls of our own secluded lives while declaring the number of “friends” we have on Facebook, though we haven’t met any of them nor actually known them in person.  The blank slate of a computer screen or of our smartphone determines the emotional viability of our daily lives, and so the required rhythm of normalcy has become one of isolated disengagement from actual 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, the required rhythm of normalcy is to act as if there is nothing wrong, when in fact there is much that is “not right”.  Consult with a FERS Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and think about breaking the required rhythm of normalcy.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill
FERS Disability Attorney

 

Attorney Representation for OPM Disability Claims: The futile treadmill

If an alien from another universe came to visit the world of Humans and somehow landed within sight of a gym or some semblance of a physical fitness facility, and remained invisible to the watchful eye, the single contraption that would puzzle and befuddle would be the treadmill.

For, ambulation upon the mechanical device would surely be observed; and upon a certain amount of time, the alien visitor would reflect that the person who remained upon the contraption would suddenly depart and actually go from Point A to Destination B, and so the puzzling conundrum of query might be: What in the world (or universe) was this person doing walking upon a revolving platform without going anywhere, then leaving it behind to then go somewhere?

All geared up with wires and headphones, with digital monitors that made beeping noises and flashing signals — but going nowhere; whereas the alien, who is dependent upon sophisticated time-warp technology in travel and transport, would consider the exertion of physical ambulation to be a primitive form of an inconvenience to reach a destination point, but would be quite enthralled by this act of futility upon a treadmill.

It is, indeed, an absurdity when one pauses and reflects: of a contraption that moves as if one is traveling, but without an individual who has any intent of reaching any particular destination point.  Or, what if the alien visitor were to view a randomly selected community from above — comfortably watching from its invisible spaceship hovering with telescopic devices — and sees the hundreds, nay, thousands of joggers and runners who begin from destination Point-A and…returns to destination Point-A.  Would that not similarly confound, confuse and befuddle?

From the perspective of the outsider, the futile treadmill has no purpose, no rationale, and certainly no cogent explanation that would account for the manner in which many of the human species behave.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are on a similarly futile treadmill — that of attempting to continue to work despite having a medical condition that tells you otherwise — it may be time to begin contemplating preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Federal Disability Retirement is precisely that benefit that is meant to get you off of the futile treadmill, and to begin to allow you to secure your future, as well as focus upon your health.  Getting off of the futile treadmill is the difficult part — of your dedication to your work and career; of the comfortable salary or wage that is being earned; and of the sense that, so long as you remain on the treadmill, somehow it will get you somewhere beyond the point of your medical condition.

Sometimes, however, the alien’s perspective is the more objective one, and remaining on the futile treadmill will continue to go nowhere or, worse, it may speed up and knock you off of the treadmill itself; then, what will you be left with?

Filing a Federal Disability Retirement application through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is a daunting bureaucratic process, and the time is likely ripe to begin it now by consulting with a seasoned attorney specializing in Federal Disability Retirement law, lest the futile treadmill begins to leave you behind.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Of the Black Widow

The subtlety of its attractiveness is often overlooked because of its mythology of potent venomousness, where it is said that its sting is more than 15 times the deadliness of a mere prairie rattlesnake, which — at least we can attribute an anthropomorphic characteristic of favorability — warns one with its loud systems resulting from its namesake.

It is often invisible, as its black and unassuming appearance allows for quiet traversing along the undersides of human existence; and the signature red or orange marking, often reflecting an hourglass on the ventral abdomen tells the frightening narrative of the limited time remaining once smitten.

Perhaps, while sitting outside enjoying the warmth of a mid afternoon pause, you reach half-asleep beneath the slats of the lawn chair, and it awaits; or the enthusiastically rapacious urban gardener who wants to feel the richness of the soil in the thawed gallows of springtime brightness, working by reaching with ungloved hands through a thicket of branches and deadwood, unintentionally grabs a bevy of clumpish organic material, and instead disturbs the habitat of this beauty of deadliness.

The mythology surrounding the Black Widow spider increases exponentially with greater study; from its sexual cannibalism to its neurotoxic potency, the innate fear towards spiders in general is magnified when encountering this particular one of is own species.  Yet, by metaphor or mere anthropomorphic analogy, we encounter similar and parallel behavior within our own species — of venom so toxic, and of seemingly innocuous engagements that barely warn, but where wariness should prevail over our lack of judgment and insight.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, and where the medical condition begins to impact one’s ability and capacity to perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal positional duties, the confrontation with an agency’s Black Widow can be shocking, daunting and ultimately fatal.

And they can — of the human kind — lurk anywhere and everywhere; from sudden eruptions of coworkers and Supervisors whom you thought were harmless, to Human Resource personnel who spew secrets of stinging, venomous sprays which can destroy the privacy and personal information of countless victims; they, like the spider of infamous beauty, can reveal greater enmity than the prairie rattlesnake.

Preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is often the only antidote available; but like the signature mark of the hourglass glowing in revelatory horror only after it is too late, filing for Federal & Postal Disability Retirement should be considered way before reaching into territories where unknown responses and reactions may prove too deadly or too costly.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: House of Cards

We have all built them as children; those shantytown assemblages like the poverty-stricken and make-shift huts constructed by corrugated debris gathered from refuse and discarded materials, flimsy and ready to collapse, if not by architectural fault lines, then certainly from the sudden and malicious puff of air emitted by one’s younger brother or sister tiptoeing  up from behind in a sneak attack.  The House of Cards — they test the dexterity and patience of one’s character, and simultaneously represent anything built on a precarious foundation, including business ventures, family relationships, and of life itself.

For the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal worker who suffers from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to impact one’s ability and capacity to perform the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal positional duties, the concept of a House of Cards can become quite personal, and in the modern proverbial metaphor, “hit close to home”.

Daily, the precarious and tenuous state of one’s employment status is tested by sudden and unexpected winds of fate, by sneak attacks and underhanded methods of operational malice.  A sudden stir of the atmosphere, a deliberate act of adversity, or the unsuspected whisper of undermining; they all amount to the same:  an attempt to further weaken the foundations which were already being tested.

The option the Federal or Postal employee needs to consider, is to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, because if the foundation of one’s life has already become shaky, the fall itself is an inevitability when confronted by the vast behemoth of the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service.

Just as 2 out of the 3 little pigs came to understand and appreciate the necessity of a firm foundation, so the Federal or Postal employee should see the wisdom in fleeing from under the House of Cards, and consider filing for Federal OPM Disability Retirement benefits; for, they ran to the third when they could, and lucky for them, the Big Bad Wolf could not get to them — at least not in some versions of the tale.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement: Predictable Pantomimes

Most of life is simply lived.  One engages, works, plans, deliberates, initiates, completes chores, gets up in the morning, goes to bed at night, etc.  Little reflection or thought is required; much of it, like an automaton on a conveyor belt of cursory convenience, requires but mere human movement.

Perhaps in the mythological State of Nature, as described by Rousseau or Locke, the predatory environment creating a necessity of alertness just to survive, required greater cognitive involvement; or, as a corollary, an utopian condition of peace and tranquil coexistence with other forces of nature.  It is when one pauses for a brief moment, reflects, and has a sudden awareness of one’s self in the presence of others, that the very knowledge of acting within the confines and context of “doing”, becomes a consciousness of self-realization.

Self-awareness — that level of consciousness beyond mere recognition of one’s surroundings, but involving a direct acuteness of “being” but simultaneously “being in the world”, is what makes for human uniqueness.

Heidegger tried to describe it through linguistic mechanisms which turned out to be beyond the common realm of understanding or comprehension, and thus became relegated to the esoteric halls of academia.  Sartre and Camus attempted to capture it through fictional depictions, and indeed, it was more the texture of the novel, The Stranger, than the actual words, which came closest to successful conveyance of the experience of the absurd.

For the daily person, medical conditions tend to starkly bring out the reality of the experience.  Medical conditions suddenly reveal one’s vulnerability, and the fragile nature of one’s being.  Mortality becomes a reality beyond mere distance-reflection of some unknown future intent; it becomes the freshness of the now for a being within a body of decay.

For the Federal employee and the U.S. Postal worker who suddenly realizes that life, career, future and the boredom of constancy can be but a moment in time because of an impending medical condition which threatens one’s security and livelihood, 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, becomes a reality of immediacy, precisely because of the urgency of the medical condition upon one’s life and livelihood.

Suddenly, the priority of “being” presents itself.  What one did before the crisis of vulnerability was merely a predictable pantomime; the reality of life and the significance of relationships becomes the true being of living.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits may seem like a mere act of administrative convenience, but for many, it becomes the avenue of necessity in order to deal with the reality of illness, disability, and medical urgency.  And, as with all aspects of life and being, other predictable pantomimes will become apparent:  the agency’s hostile reaction; the looks of suspicion from others; unfriendly attitudes displayed by coworkers and supervisors; they are all merely actors on a larger stage, but yet to realize that “being” and “being-in-the-world” are one and the same, when tragedies befall and humanity acknowledges the fragile nature of life, like the soft petal from a dying flower which drifts soundlessly upon the earthen dust from which we were born, and to which we return.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire