Federal Employees Disability Retirement Systems: The Quarantined Mind

From early childhood, the necessity of imposing constraints and conformity produces the positive effect of a well-ordered society.  But corollary and unforeseen consequences often occur, as in the quashing of creativity and mindsets which step outside of the proverbial “box”.

The problem with people talking about thinking “outside of the box” is that such a thought process itself constitutes nothing more than mundane conventional wisdom.  Those who have considered thoughts beyond the artifice of social concordance have already done that which is widely preached, but little known.  Then, along comes a calamity or crisis, necessitating a change of lifestyle and a different manner of approaching the linear and customary manner of encountering life.  The other adage comes to mind:  necessity is the mother of invention.

Medical conditions tend to do that to people.  Suddenly, things which were taken for granted are no longer offered:  health, daily existence without pain; the capacity to formulate clarity of thought without rumination and an impending sense of doom.

Federal Disability Retirement is a benefit offered to all Federal and Postal employees who require a second chance at life’s anomaly; it allows for a base annuity in order to secure one’s future, while at the same time allowing for accrual of retirement years so that, at age 62, when the disability retirement is recalculated as regular retirement, the number of years one has been on disability retirement counts towards the total number of years of Federal Service, for recalculation purposes.

It allows for the Federal or Postal employee to seek out a private-sector job, and earn income up to 80% of what one’s former Federal or Postal position currently pays, on top of the disability annuity itself.  It thus allows and encourages the Federal and Postal worker to start a new career, to engage another vocation, and consider options beyond the original mindset of one’s career in the federal sector.

In the end, it is often our early childhood lessons which quarantined the pliant mind that leads to fear of the unknown because of changed circumstances.  To break out of the quarantined mind, sometimes takes a blessing in disguise; but then, such a statement is nothing more than another conventional saying, originating from the far recesses of another quarantined mind.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: Comparative Living

We all engage in it; it is the genre of modernity by which one values and estimates.  With the shrinking world through sharing of information in this technological age, the greater minds have proposed that poverty can be erased and world hunger can be eradicated.  But in the reality of the microcosmic world of daily living, it has allowed everyone to peer into the living rooms of all, and in the process, the heightened camaraderie through shared information has become exponentially magnified.

There are positives for every change; but then, the negatives quickly follow.  Comparative living results in having a rigid sense that a linear form of life must be embraced, at all times, in all circumstances, and anything out of the ordinary constitutes failure of the first order.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition impedes and interrupts the planned flow of one’s life, and where the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s job, consideration must be given to a changed life outside of the realm of comparative living.

Federal Disability Retirement is a benefit which allows for the essence of that which is most important:  focus upon treatment of the medical condition; prioritizing of that which is of the greatest impact:  health, life, and securing one’s future.  What other people do; how others think; where others are going; they all become comparatively of little worth.

For the Federal employee and the U.S. Postal worker who suffers from a medical condition, filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management must be the focal point in securing one’s future, and any comparison of one’s life to others who continue on with their linear goals in a world consumed with measuring worth against everyone else, must be cast aside to secure the reality of a present need.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire