Federal Employee Disability Retirement: An Expectation of Disaster

Most lives are lived with an expectation of unease; if things are going smoothly, we look with suspicion at what will come from around the corner; if calm and quietude prevails, we consider it merely a precursor to a major storm; and if good fortune comes our way, there is a leeriness as to the strings attached.

Perhaps distrust is based upon justifiable historical events; or, as news is merely the compilation of tragic events gathered into a compendium of daily interests, so our skewed perspective of the world merely reinforces what our childhoods entertained.  With a foundation of such natural tendencies to see the world with suspicion, when a medical condition impacts a person, the expectation of crisis is only exponentially magnified.

Suddenly, everyone becomes the enemy, and not just the few who are known to lack heart; and actions which were previously normative, becomes a basis for paranoia.  Chronic pain diminishes tolerance for human folly; depression merely enhances the despair when others engage in actions betraying empathy; and the disaster which was suspected to be just around the corner, closes in on us when pain medications fail to palliatively alleviate.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to prevent one from performing all of the essential elements of one’s job, the bifurcation between the personal and the professional, between play and work, often comes crumbling down upon us, and signs of potential trouble portend to indicate to us that it may be time to “move on”.  That impending sense of doom?  It may be upon us.  That calm before the storm?  The reality of what the agency is contemplating may prove you right. And the potential loss of good fortune?

Agencies are not known for their patience.  For the Federal or Postal employee who is no longer one of the “good old boys” of the network of productive employees because of a medical condition which is beginning to impact one’s ability to maintain a daily work schedule, or perform at the level prior to the onset of a medical condition, consideration should be given to preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether one is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

Time is often of the essence, and while most expectations of impending disasters are unfounded, the behavior of Federal agencies and the U.S. Postal Service can never be relied upon, any more than the weather can be predicted a day in advance.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: The Distant Whisperings of Change

When the warning signs in the sky prophesize that it is time to go to the promised land of Federal or Postal Disability Retirement

Sometimes, it is a gnawing sense; other times, a faint murmur whispering a warning of wayward paths impending upon the precipice of time, urging one to consider a different trail to take; but more often, it is not the distant sound of the mountains which we fail to consider; rather, it is that we selectively hear, but deliberately ignore.

Medical conditions tend to betray us; they do not provide the subtlety of quiet and gentle reminders, and when they do, the progressive nature of the drumbeat of persistent pain, chronicity of signs, and incessant expansion of deteriorating dimensions call for an attention which refuses to be avoided.

Change is often and inevitable aspect of life.

For Federal and Postal employees who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s job, the need to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal Worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the growing nature of one’s debilitating medical condition cannot be ignored.

If the precept of life is accepted, and change is an inevitable component of the precondition for the future, then ignoring the warning signs impending is merely to delay the consequences of that which is existentially fateful.  Unlike the sound of the mountain permeating the morning sunrise, where the mist of calm begins to lift like angels in the twilight of heaven, medical conditions which require a change in one’s life must be acknowledged and accepted.

Federal OPM Disability Retirement is a benefit offered to all Federal and Postal workers who have the minimum 18 months of Federal Service under FERS, and 5 years under CSRS; it allows for the Federal and Postal employee to move forward in life, and not remain stuck in the misery of changelessness. As change is the bellwether for the future, so remaining stuck is to ignore the distant whisperings of change, and the inevitable necessity of acting.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Disability Retirement from the USPS and other Federal Government Agencies: Belonging

There are no more causes by which people live, and those who do, do so within an artifice of self-justifying chameleons of linguistic gibberish. Once upon a time, grand philosophical systems were propounded; from the historical backdrop of Plato’s Republic, to the teleological schemata of Aristotle’s Metaphysics; to Aquinas’ Christian worldview, Kant’s bifurcation of the known and knowable worlds; but with deconstructionism, linguistic playgrounds of modernity, and the debunking of political innocence with the advent of information technology and the dissemination of all things private melded into the public arena, where Facebook constitutes the quantitative assemblage of friends, likes and self-promoted happiness on virtual images of frozen smiles and milk-white teeth; and in the end, what we are left with is a needed sense of belonging.

Belonging represents the last vestige of human instinct on the evolutionary scale of survival; and so men and women strive to hold on to hollow and ghostly caricatures of empty promises. For Federal employees and Postal workers who suffer from a condition, such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties, it is often a stark choice presented: to remain with the Federal or Postal job; to resign and walk away with nothing to show for the years of invested time and effort into one’s career, except for a deferred annuity well into old age; or to file for Federal OPM Disability Retirement benefits.

The threat of loneliness and severance of ties to an agency, a mission and a purpose in life, is one which compels the Federal or Postal employee to “hold on” to that which has already been lost, for a period longer than sage advice would allow for, and certainly beyond the point of medical interest for the Federal or Postal employee whose deterioration of health, whether physical, emotional or psychological, continues with unabated progression.

The need to belong is a powerful instinct of evolutionary vestiges; and though we may try to conceal the origins of our being by spending countless hours on the Internet remaking ourselves because causes of yore have proven to be empty vessels of timeless interludes between graveyards filled with unnamed masses of those whom history has forgotten, but for quietude felt on the reddened horizon of memorials and notebooks of ageless spectrums of dusty memories — we seek to belong.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is always a hard decision to make. It is difficult because, the act of doing so is a recognition of both a need to step into an unknown future, as well as a severing of ties of the known past. Both sides of the singular act reveal the instinct of timeless necessity: belonging.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire