OPM Disability Retirement under FERS: The Rhythmic Life

We see it in others; of course, musicians possess it; You-tube videos which go viral; some grandmothers who seem to suddenly perk up and perform an amazing series of dance-steps; but beyond performing bodily gyrations of gymnastic beatitudes, the Rhythmic Life is more of a manner of living — of being “in tune” in a comprehensive way, where everything is clicking, where “happiness” is not focused upon because it is already assumed.

When we stop and constantly genuflect over our own state of being, it is an indicated that we are “out of rhythm”.  When an athlete pauses and “thinks” too much about the efficiency of movement, there is something fundamentally wrong.  When the flow of life is paused; when the question mark keeps persisting; when something just doesn’t “feel right” — that intuition is too often the basis of a deeper problem.

Medical conditions distort and cut off the rhythmic life; and when, for Federal and Postal employees, the loss of rhythmic life is disruptive to one’s career and ability to perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, it is time to consider preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management under FERS.

Contact a disability attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and begin the process of re-asserting that Rhythmic Life which has slowly and progressively been lost to the medical condition which incrementally became chronic and debilitating.

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.

 

OPM Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: Lachrymose

The word for the day — “of or given to weeping”, as in, “A lachrymose temperament”, or a “lachrymose story about orphan children in Eastern Europe.”

Its opposite, of course, is what is more of the case — of stoicism and keeping that upper lip stiff; for, the antonym of life is comprised of being uncomfortable with revealing too much empathy, lest the tears shed would open up vulnerabilities likely taken advantage of.

The synonym of life is the danger of becoming too maudlin; and the worst of all combinations would thus be: “A person with a lachrymose temperament given to maudlin reactions”.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition where the medical condition begins to impact the Federal or Postal employee’s ability and capacity to perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, there may in fact come a point where one’s lachrymose circumstances require the next step beyond merely trying the hide the medical condition from your supervisors and coworkers.

Filing a Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS is not an admission that one has been defeated by a lachrymose attitude; rather, it is the realization that an incompatibility exists between one’s chronic medical condition and the type of job you are required to perform.

Contact a retirement attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and begin the process of countering the lack of empathy manifested by or Agency or Postal Unit, where the lachrymose condition is viewed as mere weakness to be taken advantage of.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

Disability Retirement under FERS: The Tough Veneer

It is a necessary character trait in this world of coldness and isolation; the facade of perfection, the mask of competence and the veneer of toughness; they all combine as the evolutionary prerequisites for survival’s continuation of the species.  Vulnerabilities must always be hidden; and when hidden, they suddenly grow exponentially with anxious solemnities that go far beyond the original crack in the veneer.

Have you ever seen what happens when there is a small splinter in the veneer?  If a child is around, curiosity complex pulling that initial strip of the veneer, and suddenly one realizes that the face of the wooden table, the front of the cabinet or the face of the cupboard is not what it appeared as: the luster of the veneer has been stripped and the ugly material beneath has been exposed.  Veneers last only for a time, and whether by weather, time or overuse, they begin to crack or reveal the true underside and expose what the veneer was meant to cover up.

For people, it is generally the stress of maintaining the veneer itself that creates the stresses of self-destruction, and when medical conditions become part and parcel of the need for the facade, the stresses themselves become exponentially exacerbated.

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 time to begin peeling off the veneer of invulnerability and allow for some relief from the suffocating nature of trying to hide the medical condition, attempting to maintain an appearance of normalcy, and striving desperately to convey a facade of healthy indifference.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits is a step towards ridding one’s self of a lie which covers the truth: That the medical condition will go away and you can just continue in the same manner as years before.  Consult with an attorney who specializes in FERS Medical Retirement Law, and consider peeling off the veneer before the veneer itself begins to show the strains of wear on its own, naturally.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: The need to belong

Is there?

The brashness of youth in the misplaced arena of self-confidence when one first encounters the reality of the world after being sequestered in schools, from High School to College, but yet to be tested by the reality of the surrounding world; and so the young person says thoughtlessly: “I don’t need anyone; I will go it alone.”  And so the story goes: and like Harry Chapin’s song, “Cat’s in the Cradle”, of little boy blue’s father who never had time to belong because he was always too busy; but then, we feel most comfortable in situations of familiarity, though we may deny it.

The need to belong is not a peculiarly human need; it is shared by most other species, although there appear to be exceptions within the subset of every species, where the loner presents with contentment, and even an antagonism towards the collective community.

Is it fear that compels the desire, or an innate sense of wanting to belong (a more positive characteristic than fear)?  Can the need be quashed and dismissed, set aside and disregarded as mere convention to be ignored and diminished?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are considering preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is it the loss of community that often makes one pause — i.e., the need to belong?

Certainly, the camaraderie and being “part of the team” — though one may scoff at the very idea — allowed for one’s identity to thrive within the community of Federal or Postal workers; and identity-tied-to-career and work is an important component in belonging to anything, for everyone.  Yet, the health condition itself is the very element that separated and excluded in the first place; the Federal Agency or the U.S. Postal Service is the “community” that begins to shun, to exclude, to make an outcast of the Federal or Postal employee, and that is almost an inevitability that must be faced.

At some point, that “community” called the Federal Agency or the U.S. Postal Service begins to lose its patience, and begins to restrict the use of Sick Leave or LWOP; or, when the FMLA runs out, a “demand” to return to work, to maintain a regular work schedule, etc., is imposed.

Unfortunately, the “need to belong” has to be a two-way street: The desire to belong on the part of the Federal or Postal worker, and the comity of interests shown by the Federal Agency or the Postal Service.  When one or the other begins to wane or vanish altogether, it is time to file for OPM Disability Retirement benefits and to look for other communities in which to satisfy the need to belong.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement Claims: Methodological approach

We hear about the various approaches — of “quantitative analysis”; of systems created for a specific outcome-based determination; of numeric, qualitative, cost-benefits balancing, etc.; and all the while, we presume that there is a “methodological” underpinning that girds the analytical viewpoint, thereby systematizing the approach into a coherent consistency in order to limit and restrict human error.

That is the conundrum, however, is it not?  It is humans attempting to implement a methodological analysis that will expunge the very essence of humanity, by humans engaging in activities to erase that which makes humans for being so human — imperfection.

Analytical approaches without a preordained methodology presumes a flighty, ad hoc approach that fails to rise to the level of a vaunted “science”; yet, if a paradigm of a “methodology” is created and implemented by an imperfect being, how can it ever attain the level of mistake-free perfection that a “methodology” can promise?  The fact is, we are trained to be imperfect, but strive for the vanity of perfection in order to appease the gods of our own fears.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, it is important to understand that there is, indeed, a “methodological approach” in putting together an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

One can enter into the administrative process by an “ad hoc” approach — by means of a proverbial “chicken with its head cut off” engagement and running about filling out this form, asking for that form, and bundling together whatever medical records one can obtain; but the better way is to have a “tried and tested” methodological approach to the entire bureaucratic morass.

Yes, human beings are imperfect; yes, the medical condition itself necessitates the preparation, formulation and filing of a Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to OPM; and, yes, the entire administrative process of such a bureaucratic procedure is maddening, disheartening and often chaotic.

However, from the ashes of such chaos, it is best to engage in the confusion and chaotic morass by sifting through the difficulties with a “methodological approach”, and to do so, consultation with an experienced attorney is likely the first best step — thus revealing the first step in the methodological approach in preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Lawyer Representation for OPM Disability Claims: Life sensations

That’s a slice of the old stand-up routine, isn’t it?  Where the old man is asked about whether this or that hurts, or whether he can feel such-and-such sensation, and he declares, “At my age, I’m lucky to feel anything at all!”

Life sensations – it is too general a concept to retain any meaningful applicability.  Instead, we are merely satisfied with portions and slices – of a cramp that is rubbed away, a paper cut that heals and a sense of love for a child, a hug received or given to placate hurt feelings.  But what about the greater sensation of “life” in general – of living daily, of being overwhelmed with awe by that sense of mystery that living in this organic, enlivened world brings to the fore, or at least it did when you were a child, once with dreams and an imagination filled with hope for the future.

There were times when you tingled with excitement for this or that activity; of an anticipatory eagerness that filled your day the very moment you woke up; and the antsy sense that you needed to get to a certain age in order to accomplish this or that, and if not at that age or the age itself passed by without much notice, that there would arrive another milestone but none too quickly because life needed to be lived in the here and now and there was no time to lose.

Somehow, those life sensations became dulled; life itself became a constant struggle, a weight of burden that began to slowly, incrementally and almost imperceptibly deteriorate.  Then came the medical condition, and the sense that everything was always going to be a struggle.

Hope for the future is a necessary prerequisite for life sensations in the present, and for Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are daily harassed by their Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service because they 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 position, it may be time to consider filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application.

All Federal Disability Retirement applications are ultimately filed through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and the waiting time itself is a daunting prospect.  But, in order to regain that lost coin of Life’s Sensations, where there is some hope left for a future yet to be secured, it may be time to begin preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, instead of waiting around for the Federal agency or the Postal Service to declare your “worth” by beginning termination proceedings with that same careless and indifferent attitude they have shown since first you began experiencing the life sensation of the medical condition that brought you to this point.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Foggy glasses

Sometimes, we realize it at the outset and pause, take a moment to clean them, then proceed with the clarity we presupposed but were ineffectual in recognizing and correcting.  At other times, we stumble through the maze of reconditeness, failing to identify, or even to recognize, the source of our abstruseness.  Those who never need glasses, have but their imaginations to project a world of persistent perceptual perplexity; others must live with the unruly contraption encased ever so prominently upon the facial protrusion high atop the control center of one’s physique.

Of course, there are advertised surgical methods, or implantations of organic lenses upon the window of one’s soul (as Plato would describe it); but in the end, most defer to those convex lenses which provide for magnification, invented sometime during the Dark Ages and before.  But clarity of perceptual comprehension, if merely a physical defect, is at least correctible; whereas most walk through life with foggy glasses of another sort, and have greater and more dire consequences resulting therefrom.

That is precisely the problem with wisdom, or the lack thereof, but more accurately, the means to attain it.  It is one thing to walk about with foggy thoughts; another altogether, to never be able to recognize it.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are caught in a quandary of the frozen steppes of indecision, where a medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal positional duties, and therefore one’s status as a Federal employee or Postal worker is likened to a purgatory awaiting further harassment, being forced to work with one’s medical condition despite every medical advice to the contrary, or worse, merely waiting to be fired — the time to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is “now”, or perhaps even yesterday.

But if one is unable to have the perceptual clarity needed to arrive at a judgment of insight, how is one to proceed?

Advice is plentiful, as is information of irrelevance; but first, to even wake up to the most basic needs and address the elementary concerns for securing one’s legal rights, future prospects, and a promise for advancement beyond the present condition of malaise, it is necessary to wipe away one’s foggy glasses, and view the world with a level of perceptual clarity beyond the confusion ensconced in the belief that the obstacle that stops us is not a mountain to climb, but one’s own nose obscured by the device so prominently placed.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: The Alliteration of Life

Cathartic calamities caused creatively cannot cooperatively contain characteristic contents clearly coordinated contumaciously.  Sometimes, the insistence upon form can result in the nonsensical loss of clarity in substance; life often reflects the absurdities we establish by convention and societal imposition, and we pay the price for it.

Life is like being a letter in a series of alliterative words; we are helpless in being attached, but cannot dissociate ourselves, separate one’s self, or otherwise excise the offending aspect.  We are forever wedded like the proverbial two peas in a pod, with an incessant but futile search for a seam to burst out.  The problem, too, is that it may all sound proper and profound; but beneath the surface of consonant melodies and mellifluous motions of letters harkening back with pleasantries of sound, sight and solace, the reality of it is that the emperor with no clothes needs to be called out, lest the closeted secrets remain dormant.

Medical conditions tend to make of life an alliteration of sorts; squeezed between the implanted word in front and crushed by the one behind, we are left without choices in being a pawn in the cycle of life’s fate.  Like the word that sounds melodious as it rolls off the tongue of the creator, we keep trying to fit in despite the absurdity of the substance and content.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers, such a metaphor of life is well-known.  Despite being stripped of dignity and design, the Federal or Postal worker suffering from a medical condition is treated as half-human, half-worth and half-baked.  They are relegated to the corner office, the basement of windowless reserves, and raked over the proverbial coals to perform menial tasks meant to humiliate and defeat.  But it all “sounds nice” — the courageous attempts by the agency to accommodate; the superficial empathy shown by supervisors and managers; it is all meant to soothe.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is often seen as just another daunting task, an obstacle placed in front of the already-stretched limits of the Federal or Postal employee; but then, what choices are there?

Like the alliterative words caught between others just because of the consonant attached, the Federal or Postal worker with a medical condition represents the alliteration of life, and preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether one is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is merely another reflection in the pond of life, provided productively as previous payment portending possible potentialities progressively purchased.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

OPM Medical Retirement Lawyer: Drawers and Other Hideaways

Whether cabinets and chests were created for neatness of housekeeping, or to bifurcate the clutter of consciousness, should be left up to anthropologists and social commentators.  Facebook, too, and Social Media, the inability to resist adding to the clatter and superficiality of what we say, what we collect, and how we amass, both information and items we choose to gather; does it all reveal the historical backdrop of the Mesozoic era, from whence we all originate?

We are all, ultimately, left to the devices of our own unmaking and insufficiencies; and that which we neatly hide in drawers of convenience, and close, become tantamount to sealing our fate when once we conceal that which needs to be maintained.

Federal Disability Retirement is a benefit which Federal and Postal workers seek to obtain, when a medical need arises and the medical condition, injury or trauma begins to impact one’s ability and capacity to perform all of the essential elements of one’s positional duties with a Federal Agency or the U.S. Postal Service.  Once obtained, the Letter of Approval received from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, often declares to the (now former) Federal or Postal employee, that a linear process from start to finish has now been concluded.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Like cars and children, maintaining the sufficiency and viability of an ongoing Federal Disability Retirement benefit is as important as the effort expended to win an approval.  And, like the car which needs a periodic oil change in order to extend the life of the internal mechanical apparatus by an exponential multiple, so the quality of effort needed to retain and maintain a Federal Disability Retirement benefit is minimal and uncomplicated; but necessary.

For Federal employees and Postal workers, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the cost of continuing care of one’s Federal Disability Retirement benefit, once achieved, should never be cast out of mind and consciousness; and rather than neatly setting it aside in some drawer or other hideaway, it should remain on full display in the centrality of one’s livelihood, lest the mice, goblins and other unwelcome creatures begin to gnaw at the ripeness of one’s Federal Disability Retirement benefit.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire