OPM Disability Retirement Lawyer: Loss of Identity

It is often the fear of losing one’s identity which prevents one from moving forward and doing what one must, what one should, and what one needs to do in life.

For some, it may involve the complexity of human interaction and involvement with people; for others, a sense of accomplishment and goal-oriented tasks; but for all, the identity of self developed through reputation, interaction, subjectively-held viewpoints and objectively-determined statements of fact: “others” see you as the Federal Air Marshal, the Auditor, the Mail Carrier, the Electronic Technician, the Air Traffic Controller, the Budget Analyst, the Attorney-Advisor, the Administrative Officer, and a multitude of other identifiable positions which grant to the Federal or Postal employee a defined role in the mission of a Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service.

It is precisely that objectively-applied identity, developed through years of self-identification combined with being defined by others, which in their cumulative aggregation, forms the knowledge of self over the years.  Such an identity becomes threatened, however, when loss of position becomes a reality in the fact of a medical condition which begins to prevent the Federal employee or the Postal worker from continuing in the role of the defined position.

For Federal employees and Postal workers who discover that the intersection of life’s misfortunes cannot be fully resolved in favor of what one wants, but must consider what is needed and required, the realization that loss of identity often raises the specter of roadblocks preventing the building of necessary steps, which then results in procrastination and greater loss due to delay, is a daily encounter with contradictions and conflicts which cannot be compromised.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, for the Federal employee or Postal worker who is under either FERS or CSRS, is a necessity mandated by circumstances beyond one’s control. It is when a medical condition begins to impact one’s ability to perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, that consideration needs to be given to filing for disability with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

The fear of loss of identity-through-job is ultimately an imaginary one, and one which belies the true essence of a person’s identity. One can get caught up in the “mission of the agency” or the camaraderie of corporate functions; but in the end, but for one’s health, very little retains meaning or significance; and to sacrifice one’s health for a bureaucratic entity which will survive long after one’s life, is a folly encapsulating tragic proportions.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: Vows and Contracts

People take vows for various reasons: vows of silence, as a satisfaction of a prerequisite for initiation into a religious order; vows of marriage, for the union intended for a lifetime of commitment and self-sacrifice; vows of revenge, for a personal vendetta in retribution for actions suffered against one’s self or on behalf of another; and similar vows of unremitting focus until the satisfaction of such enduring commitment is accomplished.  Similarly, contracts are entered into each day, across the globe, between individuals, corporate entities and groups formed specifically for business and personal reasons.

Is there a difference between a “vow” and a “contract“?  On a superficial level, the former is viewed as a “higher order” semblance of the latter.  In a deeper sense, that is not only true, but all the more so — or, in erudite form, a fortiori.  For, to vow is to give of one’s self in totality of being; it is a gift of one’s self, often without any expectation of a similar receiving.

In contract law, of course, it is precisely the comparative analysis of a “consideration” provided and received, which determines the viability and sustainability of the agreement itself.  Far too often, Federal and Postal employees see their commitment to an agency or the U.S. Postal Service as a “vow” in employment, as opposed to a contract freely entered into, and just as freely abrogated when the need arises. This is seen when a Federal or Postal employee suffers from a medical condition and must consider the need to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS or CSRS.

The Federal or Postal employee treats the job as one of a “vow”, as if the significance of clinging on to the position is of greater importance than the detriment manifested to one’s health.  Federal Disability Retirement benefits, offered to all Federal and Postal employees under FERS or CSRS, is merely a contractual annuity accorded based upon the status of the individual as a Federal or Postal employee, and further proven by a preponderance of the evidence.  No vows have been exchanged — neither of the silent type, implicit, nor explicit, and certainly not of an unequivocal or unremitting nature.

Contractual terms are meant to be asserted; and one of the provisions of the “contract” for all Federal and Postal employees, is that when the Federal or Postal employee suffers 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 the Federal or Postal job, then eligibility for Federal Disability benefits may be invoked.

To accept a contractual provision is never to take advantage of anything, unfairly or otherwise; rather, it is merely a satisfaction of terms. To do otherwise, and to confuse X as Y, as in mistaking a contract for a vow, is merely to bathe in a puddle of muddle-headed thinking.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Federal Disability Retirement: Cognitive Dualism & the Two Incommensurable Paths

Cognitive dualism is the concept that one cannot hold onto two competing and contradictory beliefs while maintaining a life of integrity and consistency. It is tantamount to suffering from a form of intellectual schizophrenia, potentially resulting in dire consequences and paying the price for attempting to force the cohesiveness of two incommensurable paths.

The anxieties which exponentially magnify; the undue stresses which naturally result from attempting to retain the impossible; at some point, the natural divergence of both will force the split, or in modern domestic parlance, determine the “uncoupling” in a nasty divorce of ideas.

For Federal and Postal employees who must contend with the inconsistency of attempting to address a medical condition while at the same time keeping control over one’s employment, such cognitive dualism becomes a harsh reality which is confronted daily. How does one deal with the serious medical issues, which should always be the priority, while at the same time address the impact upon one’s inability to perform all of the essential elements of one’s job?

The two incommensurable paths may come to a crisis point, where both cannot be adequately maintained.  It is at this point that the Federal or Postal Worker must consider the option of Federal Disability Retirement.  For, Federal Disability Retirement benefits are precisely those employment benefits available for the Federal or Postal Worker who finds him/herself in such a situation of cognitive dualism, where two incommensurable paths must necessarily be addressed, and one must be chosen.

The stark reality and the harshness of the choice would be: one’s health, or one’s job. But for Federal and Postal employees, there is a “third” path — that of Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS or CSRS, and filed through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Thus can cognitive dualism be reconciled where two incommensurable paths may seemingly diverge, and allow for a compromise of sorts, by fighting for an approval of a Federal Disability Retirement annuity through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Not all paths must split into two, where choices are bifurcated into an either/or; instead, sometimes one must find the hidden path through the grassy knolls less traveled.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: Those Welcome Distractions

Filing for a Federal Disability Retirement through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is a step which admits of a stark reality:  One’s medical condition has come to a point of irreversible deterioration, such that the impact upon one’s ability to continue in one’s chosen career now manifests itself to a degree which can no longer be concealed.

Interludes of distractions in life — whether a holiday, a period of inclement weather; perhaps a child’s sports event; or even watching the Olympics on television with one’s family; all such distractions allowed for needed interruptions and delays in facing the harsh reality of one’s situation, and each such delay allowed for procrastination and avoidance of the issues.  But at some point, the decision has to be made, and when one runs out of such welcome distractions, the pragmatic steps in order to successfully file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits must be systematically considered.

How and when to approach one’s treating doctor to garner the necessary support; the timing of informing one’s agency; a careful study of the factual and legal criteria necessary to qualify for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether under FERS or CSRS; obtaining legal advice, guidance and representation; the time involved; the costs involved; making the adjustments for one’s future, etc.

Life’s distractions are small pockets of delights; but when the distractions detract from making important decisions, it is time to reconsider the prioritization matrix upon which one’s foundation is built.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Disability Retirement for Federal Government Employees: Wrong Turns

We often take wrong turns in life, or unexpected ones, and end up in places, circumstances and situations which were unintended, or at the very least, not included in our childhood dreams.  But the fact that one’s original plans failed to materialize in full, or resulted in an altered state different from nascent dreams, does not make the consequential endpoint any less valid or fulfilling.

Life often takes alternate twists and turns different from one’s original and neat packaging — based upon what life “should be” as opposed to what life “is” in the harsh reality of everyday existence.

For the Federal and Postal Worker who is beset with a medical condition such that the medical conditions prevents one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s job, the trauma of the condition itself is enough of a twist in life to contend with, leaving aside the decision to change one’s career and intended path of one’s dreams.

Regret and remorse often abounds, but one should look at it in a different light.  Rarely is a life which fails to change from the paradigm formulated in childhood, relevant or fulfilling throughout adulthood.

Federal Disability Retirement benefits is an available tool for the Federal and Postal Worker who must consider a turn in life.  Filed through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, it is available precisely for those Federal and Postal Workers under FERS or CSRS who must face the prospect of make a turn — and where a medical condition is involved, it is neither a “wrong” one, nor one which must necessarily disrupt a childhood paradigm.  It simply is one of those “ises” in life.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Federal Worker Disability Retirement: Banners and Slogans

It is indicative of a society, its values and ethical underpinnings, reflected in accepted public slogans and banners.  Habits are formed by repetitive acts performed first with some thought, then subsequently on automatic pilot.

Each of us walks around with a complex web of intricate belief systems developed over many years; rarely can we penetrate beyond the veil of slogans and banners, for they make up the majority of our consciousness.  That is why it is rarely fruitful to engage in debate; our preset ideas are intractable and unable to be altered; we remain who we are, what we believe, and why we stand for things as they are.

When was the last time you witnessed a debate or discussion resulting in the admission of one or the other of the participants with a declaration of a changed outlook?  To hold fast to an opinion is somehow a virtue, even if one is frightfully wrong.

For Federal and Postal employees who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition may necessitate filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the obstacle preventing one from initiating the necessary steps will often be the very psychological barrier which is deemed to be a virtue.

Hard work and sacrifice at the expense of one’s health is held up to be a virtue to applaud; but at some point, such an intractable outlook becomes merely nothing more than stubbornness, and even the grandest slogan of bureaucratic thoughtlessness would admit that stubbornness is not an attractive character trait to retain.  At some point, the world of sloganeering and banners tooted about the “mission of the agency” must be overcome with the self-understanding that one’s mental and physical health is paramount; otherwise, automatic piloting will negate the need for human control.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether under FERS or CSRS, is a necessary component for self-preservation for those Federal and Postal employees who are suffering from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal job.

Setting aside the societal banners and slogans which impede good judgment may be the first step in the process, and is often the greatest obstacle to overcome.  For, one’s education is often comprised of being soiled with the residues of social experimentation, and in that sense, we are mere guinea pigs in service to others.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Disability Retirement for Federal Government Employees: The Healing of Time

Time is a peculiar phenomena; if it is based upon the movement of objects or thought, then the entity oblivious to one’s surroundings remains unaffected.  For the human animal, the reliance is based upon a societal norm of sequential and linear movement, with multiple tracking devices including mechanical and digital clocks, watches, etc.

Does time heal?  When one is in the midst of a crisis or calamity, one rarely thinks of the extension or duration of one’s focus upon the dimension and context of one’s condition; but afterwards, in retrospect, it is often a period characterized by blurred and obscured images in the mind of one’s subconscious eye.

For the Federal and Postal employee who is suffering from a medical condition, such that the medical condition is impacting the ability to pursue one’s chosen career, time often becomes an enemy and adversary; for, the agony of time in the office or in the field; the time away from one’s office to attend to one’s medical conditions; the “time” it takes to accomplish tasks previously done without thought; and the time it requires to recuperate from the exhaustive efforts to continue in one’s job.

Federal Disability Retirement is a benefit which must be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, for those Federal and Postal employees under FERS or CSRS.  If time has become an adversary, it may be the appropriate moment to consider filing for OPM Federal Disability Retirement benefits.

As for whether time ever heals; it is perhaps the memories which fade, and the intrusion of life’s everyday busyness which forces former issues of importance to fade over time; but in the end, it is not time which heals, but the imposition of future challenges which rearranges the priorities of our lives, to rescue us from our own ruminations of ruin.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

OPM Disability Retirement: When Once Sleep is No Longer Restorative

Sleep is more than the cessation of activities; it is a state of slumber and dormancy, when one can effectively escape from the daily stimuli of variegated bombardments; as an escape, it allows for the mind to suspend the frantic functioning of communicating and conveying the billions of information bits which must be perceived, processed, bundled, interpreted, and delivered to the destination needed for instantaneous response and decision-making.

Such a complex, subconscious and underlying process may be comprised of a simple act as mundane as scratching an itch located in one’s lower extremity; or it may be to respond to an emergency of epic proportions involving countless lives.  But for each response and particularized stimuli, the multitude of processing venues which the mind must filter requires a time of restorative relief, known variously as that state of “sleeping”.

Thus, for the Federal and Postal employee — whether in law enforcement in tracking down criminals and drug cartels; or for Federal prosecutors who must weave a complex web of details to put together a case; or for the window clerk at the Postal Service who must respond to multiple queries from customers on an hourly basis; all are subjected to varying degrees of information processing by the brain, which requires complex connections occurring beneath the skin, within the protective skull of our brains, and sent to destinations throughout our bodies.

At the end of the day, sleep becomes a necessity, for purposes of restorative value, to rejuvenate mind, body, and the classic “ghost in the machine” — the human soul.  But when sleep is no longer restorative; when the chronic pain interrupts the required time of suspended dormancy; or when the anxieties of the human psyche overwhelm us with uncontrollable ruminations of fears both real and created — then sleep itself becomes an enemy of our own making.  Without that period of restorative suspended dormancy, the very lack of sleep exacerbates those other medical conditions which dominate our daily lives.

Federal Disability Retirement, whether under FERS or CSRS, through the Office of Personnel Management, allows for the Federal or Postal employee to escape that vicious cycle of medical condition/lack of sleep/progressive deterioration/work/back to the constancy of the debilitating medical condition.  Perhaps it is time to rethink the paradigm.

Federal Disability Retirement is a step forward for Federal and Postal employees, in order to reach that point of restorative sleep needed, for the health of the human psyche.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement for Federal and USPS Workers: Excuses

Language is the vehicle by which self-justification is established.  Think about it; if we assume that there is a conceptual void in the mind of other animals, that the consciousness of a squirrel, a raccoon, an owl, etc., is devoid of language as we employ it, then how can procrastination or delay occur?  It is precisely language and the tools of conceptual constructs which provide for an “excuse” for response to a stimuli, and allows for human action to be prevented.

The will to act or refrain from acting is often considered the hallmark of higher intelligence; but intelligence itself can be a detrimental quality, allowing for self-destructive actions resulting from a string of illogical but persuasive reasonings.  Where lack of intelligence provides for the immediacy of response to a presented encounter, so the presence of it in elevated forms will allow for justifying delays to such responses, even if it means a magnified danger to one’s own survival.

Excuses and self-justifying declarative sentences allow us to maintain a false sense of security by providing foundations for continuing on a path of self-destruction.  That is precisely why the Federal and Postal employee who suffers from a progressively deteriorating medical condition can maintain a semblance of normalcy despite physical and cognitive indicators to the contrary, sometimes for months, and even for years.  But pain and cognitive dysfunctions have a funny way of reminding the body and mind of danger signals.  Brain synapses communicate the growing danger, and they continue to alert until the time comes when no more linguistic justifications will maintain that false sense of security.

When that time comes, the Federal or Postal worker must consider the option of filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether under FERS or CSRS, through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

There is always time for being excused, and sometimes it is well-justified; then, there are other times when the exhaustion of excuses comes to a crisis point, and one must consider a different path.  That “different” path is the need to have a restorative period of recuperation in order to attend to one’s impending medical condition.  Federal Disability Retirement, under FERS or CSRS, is just that allowance for recuperation, and is a path of difference for many Federal and Postal employees.

There are excusable considerations, which last for a time; but time is a linear movement of bodies, and on the universal scale of progression, there comes a point when both time and excuses run out their course of self-justifying efficacy.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement Benefits for US Government Employees: Dog-like Loyalty

It is of the old adage — of the dog which refuses to bite the hand which feeds him.  It is only the human animal which betrays the adage; but, then, that is part of the point of the saying, and the recognition of the perversity of man.

It is thus not a wonder that Federal and Postal employees who suffer from a medical condition, remain unilaterally loyal to their agencies, despite sufficient evidence to the contrary and which would easily justify acting in a disloyal manner.  Years of toil and doing extra work without asking for anything in return will not result in empathetic treatment by an agency when the Federal or Postal worker requires such extraordinary treatment during a medical crisis; and when the surprised Federal employee becomes aghast at the reactionary irrationality of the agency, those of a cynical nature will often respond, “What did you expect”?

But the adverse nature of how an agency reacts when its employee files for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether under FERS or CSRS, is really the flip-side of the same coin:  the Federal or Postal worker acts like the loyal dog; the agency acts like the hand-biting dog.  It is the inherent nature of the complex make-up of the human animal which allows for such contradictory reactions.  Or, perhaps not — it may be just as simple an explanation that there are bad people in the world, and those who expect goodness from human nature will normally be sorely disappointed.

That is why when an agency provides for unexpected level of support during the process of a Federal or Postal Disability Retirement application, we react with such gratitude and surprise because of the exceptional nature of such a response.

One indicator that is fairly reliable, of course, is the wagging of the tail — unless, of course, it is the tail wagging the dog; but that is another adage altogether, for another time.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire