FERS Medical Retirement from OPM: Better Days Ahead

If you have had the worst of days, then looking forward to better days becomes an undeniable fact of predictable certainty.

Good and bad days occur for all of us, whether determined by some objective standard, or by the whims of altering moods.  Like weather patterns and tempestuous personalities, the accounting of days and their qualities alter by minutes and lesser fractions thereof.

Human beings possess an excellent capacity for self-determination and defiance of fate and karma, both of which are influenced by the attitudes we display.  Can we always count on better days ahead?  And more to the point, how can we contain and circumscribe the bad days?

It has been variously pointed out that frustration is produced by the broader gap between expectation and achievement, where one’s unrealistic anticipation of goals to achieve falls far short of realistic ends annotated.  Thus, it is always essential to identify items which will come to fruition no matter what.

In other words, always include in any “to-do list” items that you are bound to be accomplished, anyway.  More importantly, circumscribe the boundaries of the current “day” and do not include more than an identifiably limited time quantification.  Stated differently, there should be a beginning time and an end point as to what constitutes a particular day.

Finally, it is always a given that we should discount Mondays — for, the day following a weekend will almost always be disastrous, no matter how we attempt to decorate it with outward appearances of successful annotations.

Are some of these tactics mere attempts at self-delusion?  Perhaps, but if we are to avoid the fates of mischievous gods who playfully attempt to throw lightning bolts in the paths of our daily lives, we must anticipate them and adjust our actions accordingly.

And for Federal employees and U.S. Post Workers who are engaged in the frustrating bureaucratic process of applying for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS, any and every mechanism employed in order to sustain a sense of humor will help you survive the maddening administrative process and help you survive to a successful end.

For, sometimes, the gods who play with our lives are not those mystical creatures watchful among the clouds above, but mere mortals walking to and fro amidst the bureaucratic halls of government offices.

And to maintain your sanity, you may want to consult with a FERS Disability Lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law to see what legal shields may be effective against OPM’s random and capricious lightening bolts of denied applications.

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: Maintenance and Repair

We know the difference; of performing regular maintenance as opposed to the necessity of repair when something breaks down.

In recent years, there has arisen a cottage industry for every type of mechanical device: Of heating units and cooling systems; of automobiles; of computers; snow blowers, etc.  Maintenance is the yearly or semi-annual need for attending to required cleaning, parts-replacement and other issues — in an effort to prevent a breakdown.

Repair is when the breakdown occurs, and when we can then blame either the failure of maintenance as the failed preventative measure (now, in reflection, thought to have been unnecessary), or the question as to why such maintenance failed to detect or otherwise forecast the failure.

Medicine itself has engaged in that line of thinking: By getting regular checkups, scheduled diagnostic tests, follow dietary guidelines, etc., we believe that such “maintenance” actions can prevent the onset of disease and conditions.

An analogy can be made for preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS: Preventative maintenance is hiring a lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law; Repair is if you do a “do-it-yourself” approach for the Initial Stage of the Process, or even the Reconsideration Stage, then you go to a Federal Disability Lawyer to “repair” the denial from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

In the end, while no lawyer can guarantee a successful outcome in a FERS Federal Disability Retirement application, the preventative maintenance of a Federal Disability Retirement application is the preferred course, but if you get denied, you will certainly need to get the legal repair-work done by contacting an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

Federal Disability Retirement: The prerequisite of thought

What constitutes “thought” and fails to satisfy the allegation that one has not engaged in it?

Take the following example: A young man who is courting a young woman buys a bouquet of flowers on his way home, but stops by at her place just to say hello.  She — seeing the flowers — declares, “Oh, how thoughtful of you.”  He sheepishly smiles and nods his head, but in reality the flowers were to spruce up his own apartment.  He explains this to the young woman, and she turns a smile into its opposite — a frown — and reverses her opinion, telling the cad how “thoughtless” he is being.

In reality, he had done no such thing — he had, in fact, “thought” about it, only not in the sequence that the young woman had desired.  Yet, he is charged with being “thoughtless” — and one could argue that such a charge is applicable in that he should have “thought about it” before stopping by her place, and instead should have gone ahead and followed a route straight home.

Or, of another example: Say you are debating a point with another individual, or a group of individuals, and someone during the course of your monologue says, “It is clear that you haven’t thought about it.” What, precisely, does that allegation mean and imply?  Would it have made any difference if you had previously taken yourself into a corner, sat for an hour or two reflectively posed like the famous statue by Rodin’s “The Thinker”, chin upon knuckle in a reflective pose of self-absorption — then come back to engage in the discussion?

What if your contribution to the conversation included as great an expanse of idiocy as if you had not “thought about it” — but the mere fact that you had sat for a couple of hours, or perhaps a weeklong sojourn of contemplative solitude — does it make a difference?  Isn’t “thinking about it” often done in the course of give-and-take, during the conversation engaged, as opposed to being lost in one’s own mind?

Further, isn’t singularity and isolation of “thinking” often the wrong approach, inasmuch as you may be missing something, have inadequate information, illogical in the process because of selfish interests unrecognizable, and therefore the best kind of thinking often involves debate, countering opinions and other’s input, as opposed to the isolationism of “The Thinker”?

Would it make sense to ask a dozen or so physicists to “solve the mystery of the universe” by gathering them together, then making each sit in a corner and “think about it”, as opposed to engaging them in a “give-and-take” brainstorming session?  Isn’t much of thinking “done” by engagement with others, as opposed to a soliloquy of isolationism?  If so, then why is there too often a prerequisite of thought?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have “thought” about 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 first and most important step in making the “right” decision may not be by engaging in an isolationism of “thinking about it”, but by consulting with an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement law.

There is no prerequisite of thought in picking up the telephone and having an initial, free consultation with an attorney to discuss the particulars of your case, and engaging in the thoughtful exercise of considering OPM Disability Retirement by actively participating in the productive modality of thinking.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement for Federal Workers: Road Maps

Does the “new way” diminish other manners and approaches?  Does an increase in technological guidance diminish and decrease the self-reliance and initiative required once upon a time?

Take, for example, the trip taken today — any trip: One merely types in the address or the phone number, presses a button and Google Maps guides you to your destination.  In days now gone and forever forgotten, one had to take out those old paper maps (you know, those multi-folded, accordion-like Rand McNally relics) stuffed in the side door compartment of one’s vehicle or dug out from under the piles of old registration cards in one’s glove compartment, and carefully follow the numerical and lettered cross-sections of quadrants in planning the course of a trip otherwise lost in the morass of unfamiliar territory.  Or, like most men — just “wing” it.

Does the loss of a road map — the necessity of its very relevance and existence — mean that there are reverberations in other sectors of one’s life, or in the way one’s brain works?  Do we, because of the ease of Google Maps, become lazier, expect that everything will be self-guided, and is that the future for everything in life, especially once the self-guided vehicle is perfected?  Does the expectation of technology’s ease make us lazier, allowing for procrastination to become extended beyond reason, where we no longer “plan” for things well in advance, assuming that whatever the issue or anticipated endeavor, it will all be taken care of by a click of a button, or at most, a few keyboard taps away?

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, road maps are a necessity of life — both for the Federal or Postal employee in maneuvering through the complex administrative pathway of a Federal Disability Retirement application, as well as in preparing a “legal roadmap” for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management in approving the Federal Disability Retirement application.

In both cases, the road map is similar to that old Rand McNally map that required quadrants to be precisely followed: For the Federal Disability Retirement applicant, the need for precise guidance by the best route possible in order to obtain an approval from OPM; and for OPM, the proper legal citations and arguments that will persuade them to grant the approval.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement Representation: Order & Disorder

Isn’t that what most of us are trying to do for a good deal of time spent?  Not to compare it to such a “Biblical” extent — but like the figure in the very first chapter of the very oldest book some hold as “sacred”: out of chaos, order is created.

Throughout one’s day, from the very awakening of those sleep-encrusted eyes, when the dreams dissipate and the nightmares subside, we wake up and try to create order out of the chaos that surrounds us.  The key to sanity is to keep pace with, or try and “get ahead”, if possible, of the impending disorder around us.  Thus can insanity be redefined as: We “lose” it when the disorder around us becomes exponentially quantified beyond one’s capacity to maintain the level of order required.

Think about it: the bombardment of stress that continues to envelope us; of a time not too long ago when “correspondence” was a written letter sent by one individual to another that took 2 – 3 days by first class mail to arrive after the postage stamp was licked and carefully placed, now replaced by a quick email and a button-push with a singular finger, multiplied by hundreds, if not thousands, and in a blink of an eye one’s “Inbox” is filled with requests, tirades, FYIs and spam beyond the measures order needed.

Isn’t that what “bringing up children” is also all about — of creating order out of disorder?  Without discipline, guidance, schooling and a bit of luck, we would all become maladapted individuals running about in diapers devoid of the learned proclivities of polite society, and be left with the allegation that one is “eccentric” or, worse, an “oddball”.

Medical conditions, too, have a way of overwhelming a person with a sense of “disorder”, in that it forces a person to do things outside of the ordinary repetition of an ordered life.  That is why it is so difficult to “deal with” a medical condition, even if it is not your own.  It interrupts one’s goals, plans, and the perspective of order that is so important to one’s sanity.

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, preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is often necessary just in order to attain that lost sense of order that has become created by the disorder of one’s medical condition.

Medical conditions make the universe formless and void; and it is the regaining of a sense of stability — of molding some sort of order out of the disorder — by obtaining some semblance of financial security through an OPM Disability Retirement, that the devil of disorder can be overcome with the gods of order in a genesis of new beginnings.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement Program: Word Piles

The etymology connotes the Biblical narrative found in Genesis, generally referred to as the Tower of Babel; in that case, not of words, but of civilizations attempting to reach the heavens in order to breach the power of the universe.  But Babel was more than the diaspora of a rebellious cabal of God’s children gathered to defy and deface; it had to do with evil, impure intent, and the conspiracy of human depravity in the face of a pure heaven and the violation of man’s sacrosanct relationship implicit after the metaphor of the Great Flood.

Words, likewise, hold such a contractual connection.  They were meant to convey the differentiation between Truth and Falsity, and to correspond to the objective universe in communicating the worth and beauty of a sanctified world.  The defamation of that level of spiritual relationship was violated not because of the tower’s construction; rather, Babel’s unanswerable sin had to do with the depravity of the human heart, and the essence of a soul’s darkening.

Whatever the motivation of the gathering’s aggregate will never be known; and of individual reasons for participating in the construction of such a structure, we can only guess at; but what is clear is that the response was one of anger, and such reaction must have had a reason:  the dispersion was both an explanation of the state of current affairs, a forewarning for any who might consider future similar actions, and a consequence of man’s violation of a once-sacred right.

Modernity suffers from a parallel state of affairs.  Though clinging to the paradigm of a Darwinian explanation of human history, and devoid of everything spiritual, mythological or generational transfers of traditional narratives, the metaphorical pile of words we amass reflect not just an attempt to become gods ourselves, but in the very process, to rebel against the very foundation of what words were meant to accomplish.

Once upon a time, in the flickering shadows and glow from fires where the village gathered to hear the storytelling ancients of the town historian, sorcerer and magic healer, the traditions carried forth from the inception of timelessness into the mysteries of the heart would pierce like the spear of the warrior, and children listened with wide-eyed wonder at the shaman who effortlessly rolled the tales from tongues emitting not mere sounds, but images and shadows of pictures more frightening than the lion’s roar or the wild boar’s tusks.

Words spoken, meant something, then.  Truth was bundled in the very telling of the tale; and falsity reflected the depravity of man’s heart, confounded by the loss of innocence in a world gone mad.

We can still get a sense of that — that encounter with words, meaning and truth; and, indeed, for Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must convey facts, circumstances and narratives of human experience when preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the piling of words upon words must convey a test of reality, and a dose of the shaman’s storytelling.

Preparing a Federal Disability Retirement application is, in the end, not just creating a word pile; it is to communicate the essence of the human condition in a world which often fails to listen, and refuses to hear.  That is why it is important to formulate it effectively, accurately, and with a coherence beyond mere word piling, lest the fall be a cloud of dust greater than the collapse of the Tower of Babel.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: Evaluative Adaptability

Life is often like a boat without oars, let alone a motor which functions; and as the waves rock the water transport, one maintains balance, sanity and survival by attempting to prepare for the whitecaps and hoping for a further delay of a storm, and never a tsunami.  But those changes inevitably come, and attack in onslaughts of exponential fury.  One attempts to adapt, to remain like the chameleon who must survive by an unwanted metamorphosis, in order to maintain the delicate balance of nature as described by the brutality of Darwin’s world.

Man presumably has the advantage of possessing the dual modalities of penultimate capacity for survival:  the cognitive and the physical.  Of the latter, the human animal is neither a lion nor a cheetah; and of the former, self-doubt, confusion and intellectual arrogance often muddles the clarity of purpose shown by other carnivores.  But it is the combination of both — of the evaluative adaptability acquired through intake and filtering of information, analysis of factual and predictable processing, and shifting positions based upon real-time data reflected upon through a compendium of intellectual acuity honed and perfected by experience.

That is precisely why bureaucracies are often potholes of frustration; as systematized repetition dulls the soul, so the imposition of irrational decisions heightens the angst of man’s inner being.  For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suddenly find that a medical condition may cut short one’s career with the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service, it is with that duality of advantageous survival mode that one must approach both the Federal agency (and the U.S. Postal Service), as well as the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Certainly, physical endurance is limited often by the medical condition and the deterioration of stamina and energy; but the evaluative adaptability and the capacity to change course should never be underestimated.

Medical conditions need not deter the direction of the boat; most medical conditions are mere whitecaps which rock like irritants on a summer evening where gnats and mosquitoes ravage the unprotected surface; but unlike hurricanes and tsunamis which overwhelm and destroy, the fact that one’s steering mechanism or the ability to propel oneself forward may be damaged, should never extinguish the Federal or Postal employee from recognizing that one’s evaluative adaptability is the key towards moving positively into the future and affirmatively taking steps to secure a brighter tomorrow, by beginning the process of preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through OPM.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: The Flavor of Our Times

Each generation has a flavor of the times — that obscure and fuzzy sense of “something” beyond which one cannot quite describe, but nevertheless leaves a distinctive aftertaste that remains and cannot be washed away.  Hypocrisy may come close to identifying it — of saying one thing, meaning another; of using words and virtual reality in order to conceal the true motive and intentions.  We see it in our politicians, in newspapers and neighborly barbecues; as truth is not the sought-after goal, and as relativism and the capacity to perform linguistic gymnastics at every turn of words, so the natural consequence of our deeds should not surprise us.  We claim empathy, but act indifferently; we teach our kids grandiose belief-systems, then act surprised when rebellion monitors the day.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers, the stark reality of what they hear as the “official” pronouncement of one’s agency, as opposed to the practical and day-to-day occurrence and action in “real time”, is like the echoing chasm of a hollow pit which reverberates with each unintelligible sound.  All of the rules and regulations promulgated for public consumption about protecting the rights of disabled Federal employees sound like collected baseball cards reserved for showing off to guests who are gullible enough to gasp with excitement over items of dubious value; but it is the “behind-the-scenes” reality of how individuals treat each other, which tells the true story of shame, deceit and indifference.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents him or her from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties, the gap between declared public policy and the reality of that insular shame, is a daily recognition of man’s inhumanity to his or her fellow man or woman.  Federal employees and U.S. Postal Service workers experience this violation daily.  That is why opting to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is often the best, only, and remaining self-preservation option, to secure one’s future and to separate from Federal Service with a semblance of dignity.

Federal Disability Retirement benefits, filed through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, allows for the Federal or Postal employee to obtain a base annuity, then go into the private sector and begin to pursue a second, or third, vocation of choice.  It is not an abandonment of one’s principles, nor a retreat from one’s beliefs. That was already accomplished years ago, when the flavor of our times became the official stance of an uncaring system which betrayed the dedicated Federal or Postal employee merely because of a medical condition beyond one’s control.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

FERS & CSRS Medical Retirement: The Question of Worth

Whether animals consider the question or not, they certainly make judgments based upon prudence, calculation and quantification of effort involved; but perhaps not in some conceptually systematic approach.  “Worth” can involve multiple meanings: of time expended; monetized value; quality; but always involving the evaluative process of comparative analysis.

It is this latter process which is important for the Federal employee and the U.S. Postal worker in determining whether to proceed with preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset. The comparison may be on different levels, and pitted against and between various elements: priority of values (health versus continuation and persistence in present circumstances); current financial condition in contrast to future reduced benefits; the penalties imposed by taking an early retirement as opposed to a Federal Disability Retirement; the length of the process in contrast to one’s age and cost of hiring an attorney; and many such similar factors to be analyzed.

Perhaps the only comparative analysis which need not be engaged is the one which the Agency implicitly compels: The worth of self, derived from the manner in which the agency or the U.S. Postal Service treats the Federal or Postal employee once it becomes evident that the Federal or Postal employee has a medical condition such that it prevents him or her from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s job, and thereby consideration must be given to filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Other animals never ask that question of self-worth, as survival and Darwinian principles prevail and overtake the inherently nonsensical nature of such a question; it is only the human being who ever questions the worth of self, and only within the greater context of a society which places a premium upon questions unworthy of consideration.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire