Federal Medical Disability Retirement: Pivotal Points

Or, forks in the road; they confront us when we least expect them, never desired, always with a sense of angst.  Half of life is procrastinating and delaying; the other half, trying to catch up to the half delayed.

The “pivot” is that central point, pin or shaft on which a mechanism turns or oscillates; so, in basketball, the foot from which the player “pivots” is the one frozen and stationary.  It is the root word where the suffix, “al” — that addendum which forms an adjective from a noun — is appended in order to create that word which we are all familiar with: of the crucial, central decision based upon that stationary point, where the movement of the other “leg” or whatever free mechanism can be directed towards, will determine the pathway, the consequences, the results — the pivotal point — in a person’s life.

We come upon many of them in life, often yet unknown, some seemingly minor at the time but with greater significance later on, upon reflection; others, of a known quantity, where the decision itself is considered “pivotal” for one’s own future.

Some examples: A minor one — of going out with friends and acquaintances, knowing that a few of them have some questionable reputations.  A night of seeming innocence which starts off without consequences, ending up in a car crash, a person dead, an arrest — in short, a tragedy which began with a simple but pivotal point, where an invitation declined could have averted the tragic results merely by non-participation.

A more “major” one: Of whether and which college to go to; whether to volunteer for military service; whom to marry; whether to accept one job over another; of whether it is time to consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under the current Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

As to the last of these pivotal points: Contact a FERS Medical Disability Attorney who specializes in FERS Disability Retirement Law, lest the decision to be made turns out to be of greater consequence than originally thought.

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.

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement Help: From Pain to Paper

It is one thing to experience pain; quite another, to convey that onto paper.  The fiction writer struggles with writer’s block; the ordinary individual (if there is such an entity), the problem is more of self-deception.  Because one experiences X, one presumes that others can relate to X as a fellow human being.

Then, of course, there is the problem of proof — of how do you “prove” a subjective content to an objective-requiring audience?  Pain is by definition subjective; mental & psychiatric conditions, similarly, are through self-reporting mechanisms.

Yes, there are correlative indicators which help to objectify that which is subjective by nature — consistency in clinical encounters; diagnostic tests which correlate with pain; tests to check for spasms and responsive physical reactions; behavior engaged which is anathema to healthy mental status; and other “tests” which confirm a medical condition of a subjective nature.

Nevertheless, the problem when preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application remains: How to move from pain or mental disorder, to paper in order to present a viable Federal or Postal Disability Retirement application to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management under FERS?

Contact and consult with a FERS Disability Retirement Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement, and take the next necessary steps from pain to paper.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS Medical Retirement for Mental or Physical Incapacity: The Path Forward

In some ways, the concept itself is redundant.  For, the phrase implies an alternative issue — the path backwards, or sideways, or the metaphorical “fork in the road” of which we must choose, etc.  But those pathways have already been traveled, considered, investigated, ventured upon — and all have been already found to be the “wrong” direction.

Forward — it is the only remaining path, and the only issue left to consider is how to forge it and in what direction to take.  There is no “going back”; and trying to take the circuitous route instead of a direct assault forward will only delay matters and perhaps make things worse.  Forward is the path, and the path forward is the way to go.  Going back is merely to go over an already-worn and tiring direction and will ultimately get you nowhere except to become stuck in the past.

We must, instead, take our circumstances as they are, assess the damage already done, then begin to cut through the bramble bushes and forge a new pathway forward into the future.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the path forward is to prepare an effective Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS and move forward in presenting it to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management for an approval.

In doing so, it is advisable to consult with an OPM Disability Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Medical Retirement: Stating the Obvious

Sometimes, it is necessary; at others, to do so appears inane and redundant; and yet, to state the obvious is often as important as not, and someone has to do it, lest the obvious become the proverbial elephant in the room which is too easily avoided and becomes too difficult to maneuver around.

The boy who cried wolf once too often stated the obvious, but in the end it wasn’t enough to alarm the townspeople because no one believed the obvious; and for the emperor who wore no clothes, the obvious had to be pointed out by a child who didn’t know any better, to a populace that should have known better.  Or how about Little Red Riding Hood — shouldn’t she have known the obvious?  Or does innocence bypass the excuse of ignorance such that we can overlook the faults of youth?

As it turns out, the obvious often does need to be stated, if only to remind us that the world of illusions we have created for ourselves cannot withstand the harsh reality of the universe within which we must survive.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition no longer allows us to continue in our current Federal or Postal jobs, perhaps it has become abundantly obvious that Federal Disability Retirement must by necessity be the next step to undertake.  It is obvious.  It has been obvious for some time.  Yet, it takes you to state the obvious, even though your spouse, your coworkers, and even your own treating doctor have been telling you that for some time, now.

Consult with a FERS Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, lest you need the obvious to be stated once again: You need to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits — now.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Medical Retirement under FERS & CSRS: The Gathering

They come from afar, and wide across the expanse of multiple cities, towns, and whether from rural areas or suburban neighborhoods, the criss-crossing of America is a tradition reserved for those special holidays where families gather, friends reminisce and relations pick up where old memories had left off.  “The Gathering” may be a once-yearly event, or perhaps a couple of times, and only once in a decade moment; however often, whatever the occasion, it is a time of recollection, reminiscence, restoration and rejuvenation.

Sometimes, even a gathering with people you hardly knew, or didn’t particularly like, is enjoyable enough, and though you might in the middle of the chatter say to yourself, “Why am I even here?” —yet, it is the mere presence of belonging that harkens one back to the lanes of memories that will not let go, like the dog that has locked its jaws onto your pant-leg and will not release you until you have finally relented.

Of course, there are other “types” of gatherings that are not so enjoyable or which bring a sense of warmth and joy — as in the “gathering” of Supervisors or Managers in conjunction with Human Resource Personnel who attempt to subvert, initiate adverse actions and conspire to make the life of a Federal or Postal employee a “hell on earth”.

Federal employees and Postal workers who suffer form 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 are at a stark disadvantage when it comes to filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits: Often, the Human Resource Office of one’s own agency is neither helpful nor mindful of the confidentiality of even asking a casual question.

A simple question like, “What forms need to be completed in order to file for Federal Disability Retirement?” — may suddenly lead to a wildfire of rumors and innuendoes concerning one’s motive, intention and future plans, and suddenly the “point-person” becomes the pariah and a gathering of managers and supervisors suddenly materializes like a an unexpected dust storm in the middle of the Gobi Desert.

Not all gatherings are equal; some are for the happiness of memories recollected; others, a conspiracy to initiate adverse actions and to undermine the future plans of a well-intended act.  For the Federal employee or Postal worker who must begin to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, “The Gathering” one should be most concerned about is the one to which you were never invited, so beware of the things you say, to whom you say it, and when you make the query.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: That wretched attachment to life

The theoretical construct proposed by Darwin has proven itself many times over, according to evolutionists, since his initial dawn of delineating the “origins” of our existence; the urge towards existence, of remaining, of “being” as an instinctive component that cannot be denied, has become merely an accepted and acceptable normative paradigm of modernity.

In many ways, the inherent attachment to life itself is the basis of a wretchedness that leads to self-destructive behavior; many of us hate ourselves and do things that hurt and harm – a mode of self-immolation and Western-style seppuku that results in self-medicating devices encapsulating the spectrum from overeating, alcoholism, multiple partners and spreading of diseases untold; or, on the other end of the extreme, of become vegetarian, vegan, health-fitness-exercise-cosmetic-surgery and everything else to stay young and vibrant.

That wretched attachment to life cannot be avoided; it is who we are and the essence of our very being.  Is there such a thing as an “unhealthy” attachment to life?  It is all well and good for Camus to write about the Myth of Sisyphus and the need to turn away from self-annihilation before being able to live an “authentic” life; he was handsome, a pretty good writer, and French (or, actually, Algerian) to boot, and his only competition was a near-blind ally who was close to incoherent in philosophical discourse (i.e., referring to Sartre, of course).

But back to the idea at hand – of that wretched attachment to life.  We see it in old people attached to mechanical apparatus to prolong it; of humanism and even religiosity that remains suspicious as to whether there is truly anything else in the great “beyond” after death; and so we cling to life at all costs.  What would be the alternative?  To live a quality-filled, balanced existence? We sometimes forget why we became what we are today, and become steeped too deeply in the troubles of everyday existence.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition becomes the focal point of existence itself, there is a double whammy: Of the chronic and often debilitating medical condition itself, as well as worrying about and contending against the daily harassment and adversarial threats initiated by the Federal agency or the Postal facility, and it often becomes so burdensome that one wonders as to that wretched attachment to life.

But always go back to basics, to the foundation of Darwinian essence: Life is, indeed precious, and sometimes it takes a different sort of step in order to regain the balance in life that is needed.  Filing for Federal Disability Retirement is merely that step in order to reorient one’s self for a future course of life.  It is a means to an end, where a Federal Disability Retirement allows for the Federal or Postal employee to separate and retire with an annuity, then to consider one’s future after attending first to the medical conditions one is suffering from.

In that sense, that wretched attachment to life is more akin to the Hindu concept of reincarnation, where obtaining a Federal Disability Retirement through OPM is like returning to this life in a different form, and becoming resurrected from the ashes of the metaphorical Phoenix to live another day.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement for Federal Employees: Poetry’s death

By the title is not meant the terminus of the literary genre; that would be too great a claim to consider.  No; instead, it is the more subtle manner of thought, the perspective of viewing, and the approach to living.  We live by metaphors and analogies; that is what the rise of language has accomplished, where the raw violence of predatory insights in nature’s setting of surviving could no longer tolerate, but where some amount of leisure, such little calculation of foresight, and a crumb of thoughtful reserve allowed for a world of mythological beauty.

Materialism killed the purring cat.  For a time, Charles L. Dodgson – whom we all know by the pen name, “Lewis Carroll” – attempted to stem the tide of decay, and succeeded for a generation or so.

Once upon a time, parables could be understood; elven creatures and angels with wings releasing residues of golden dust, tinged with faith and tinctures of mysterious delights would pass by windows left ajar for welcoming strangers; and sleeping beauties, knights in shining armor riding upon white horses to rescue were but assumed and accepted, and not the rattling ugliness of windmills mistaken for dragons no longer existing.  We believed.

But then came science, logic and the Darwinian distance of antiseptic explanations, and we all embraced it because of its allure of pragmatic promises.  But has it brought us any greater joy or insight into life’s misgivings?

Shakespeare referred always to the alignment of the stars, and of gargoyles behind the fool’s mask; and while the inquisition of religion’s past haunts still in the corridors of forgotten subterranean memories, it is the loss of inquisitiveness which makes for greater sorrow.

Words and explanatory concepts must abide by the correspondence they convey to the greater world about; and whether the world is deemed flat, or the earth is no longer a geocentric universe but a reversal to an upside-down world constituting a heliocentric perspective, unless the believer is a seafarer or an astrophysicist attempting to calculate the incalculable in geometric complexities beyond our present concerns, what difference does it make – except that we no longer embrace the wonderland lost to the science of inchoate values.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, where the present pain and anguish suffered is something experienced in “real time” and impacted in actual terms, it is often poetry’s death which compels one to prepare, formulate and file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

Think about it:  it is work in order to play; play is the time of leisure in order to engage in the poetry of life.  But when a medical condition forces one into a life of drudgery, where the “play” part of life is merely more work in order to get enough rest or sleep to continue in the “work” portion of living, then life as a whole becomes unbearable, and no amount of poetry can soothe the pains of this life.

That is why preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Employee Disability Retirement application – in order to circumvent the agony of one’s medical condition – becomes important in order to reach that plateau where one can attend to the medical conditions themselves, and further, to forestall the inevitability of poetry’s death.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: Cavalier extinctions

We focus much on lost species, forever erased at a rate of untold apocryphal dimensions, as if the deletion of undiscovered DNA material might never be recovered, and thus for once, we worry about things which we have never known ascribed as that which “could” have saved us from our own extinguishment, all the while ignoring the plight of human detritus all around us.  We do that with fading civilizations, too, don’t we?

We argue for egalitarianism, impartiality, and for all things being of equivalency in value and worth; but, somehow, the “primitives” remind us of that romanticized notion which touched our nerves, even as Rousseau created a fictional “State of Nature” in which we lived in complete harmony (but for those few who, through brutish force and uncivilized conduct, forced us into an unwilling social contract in order to aggregate our weaknesses against a Hobbsian Leviathan for self-preservation and protective numerical advantage) and to which we pay homage in childhood fantasies.  And so we strive to pursue our own environmental agendas, as if we can police the universe against the insanity of our own making; all the while, we engage in cavalier extinctions, ourselves, though we may name it by another identity.

We form and drop relationships; we friend, defriend, add and delete with a push of a button; we even divorce and break up so-called lifetime commitments, with the cavalier explanation that it is “better” to live in harmonious consonance than to subject the innocent to daily ravages of our own termpermantal tumults.  An electronic screen, whether on a tabletop, laptop or a smartphone, can easily bring the bright glare of activity as the blank blackness of nothingness.

That is why extinguishment of purported “friends” can occur just as easily as engaging artifices of friendships; the button itself determines the substance and depth of any such relationship.  It was hard enough actually know and tolerating people; it is easier still, to know them on the tablet of a screen, and not have to contend with irritants of behavioral eccentricities.

On the spectrum of human growth, we are stunting ourselves by relegating the mechanism and tools for human conduct to mere words and responsive utterances on lighted screens.  The tools which we provide to the innocents, to develop those traits for successful human interaction, are diminished by the limited resources available via distance interaction.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, and who by necessity must consider preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the notion that there is a negation of estimable empathy, sympathy, and just simple human caring, becomes a glaring reality too quickly, too forcefully, and with a dosage of untold reality.

Will it only get worse?  Probably.  As the new crop of managers and supervisors who have little contact with actual relationships, but whose voided perspective has been formed by online services of gratuitous and dubious authenticity, the level of understanding and mechanisms for human compassion become exponentially diminished.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management for a Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker is not a mere choice of optional engagement; it is spurred by necessity and human tragedy.  But beware, as this brave new world of cavalier extinctions will bring forth the worst in the unclaimed losses of genetic materials, where the Darwinian principles seem to finally win out in a battle of fierce and unwitting conflicts for the survival of the fittest — or meanest.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Avoidance

There are always activities and interests to pursue; that is the “stuff” of which life is comprised.  Heidegger referred to the multiple and endless projects as a means of distracting ourselves from the ultimate fate of our existence; but in truth, it is far less complex than that.  Keeping busy is a means of filling in the void of daily toil, and where activity tires the soul, thoughtfulness is replaced with silence.

Have you ever met a person who talks a mile-a-minute, and is seemingly always on the way out, never to have time to pause for breath?  It is as if the grim reaper of time and eternity is just behind, on his tail, about to determine the inestimable worth of a life pursuing the unfulfilled dreams of gnomes, children and elves who jump into hobbit-holes like the white rabbit which Alice followed into the hole of Wonderland.  It is, in the end, an avoidance of sorts, where one knows in the subconscious of harbored secrets that a time in the near future will come, and fall upon the waiting soul like a weight of gold.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer in pain, or in psychiatric modes of inconceivable anguish, the need to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is often delayed by deliberate avoidance.  And that is certainly understandable.

The direct confrontation with the problems of life and daily living is less preferable than the enduring activities which keep one’s soul busy with the flurry of thoughtless projects.  But as time tolls regardless of one’s efforts to procrastinate, so the politician who kicks the proverbial can down the chute of endless and moronic drones of discussion, focus-groups and formed committees for further study, is merely avoiding the inevitable.

It is first and foremost the entrance of the medical condition.  Then, slowly, the realization that it simply won’t go away, no matter how busy one is, and how unfair life has become.  Then, the progressive impact upon one’s physical and cognitive capacities ensues.  When the two roads converge, it is time to consider preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Avoidance of necessity may work for a fortnight, but the projects which make up life’s “stuff” can only fill the void for a season, if that.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire