Federal Disability Retirement: Human Perfection

Human perfection, it would appear, can be achieved.  How?  Simply by altering the definition of terms and utilizing the malleability of language, the short attention-span of historical memory, and the capacity of people to fool themselves.  It is the methodology of “moving the goal posts” once the opposing team comes within striking vicinity of scoring in a game; instead of tinkering with the substance of the issue, we merely change the rules of application.

Such actions certainly reveal the disconnect between language and reality, where the former reflects the gymnastics of linguistic flexibility without direct connection to the latter, and where the latter can continue to remain unchanged despite the radicalization of the former.  It is the universe of Orwellian reality, where one may declaratively assert the truth despite empirical evidence to the contrary.  But there are limits to such an approach.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, the progressively deteriorating nature of the diagnosed medical condition, in and of itself, is just such a limiting factor.  Try as one might, you cannot “fake it”, or even if you can (for a time or a season), the nagging reality of the chronic and pervasive immediacy of pain, debilitating symptoms, and overwhelming fatigue tends to make irrelevant such attempts of avoidance, neglect and attempted pigeonholing of the medical condition itself.

Language is ultimately meant to connect the objective world with the capacity to communicate through the insular subjectivity of thoughts, responses and feelings; instead, in modernity, it is too often used to validate the subjective universe of narcissistic egoism.

For the Federal employee and the U.S. Postal worker who has come to a point where language can no longer redeem the reality of one’s medical condition, consideration needs to be given for filing a Federal Disability Retirement application through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.  The Federal or Postal employee can only use the malleability of language only for so long; and just as perfection is never truly achieved just because we say it has, so the mere fact that the Federal or Postal employee asserts that the reality of the medical condition will “just go away”, doesn’t make it so.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Filing for OPM Disability Retirement: The Novel Approach

The genre represents the highest form of literature.  Poetry possesses its eccentric beauty; the short story its ease of brevity for the reader to pick up and finish in convenience of time, and thus its popularity; the biography and the epistemologically privileged cousin, the autobiography, its authentic historicity; and others by design of self-promotion, as Truman Capote’s “non-fiction novel” (an oxymoron?).

But the novel is the king of prose; of a narrative form which allows for many rooms in an endless castle of hidden trap doors and secret galleys full of antiquities and doorways yet to be revealed.  Perhaps that is why, used as an adjective, it defines a uniqueness of approach, akin to the traditional use of the word as a noun representing the highest form of art.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers 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 positional duties with the Federal government or the U.S. Postal Service, engaging in a “novel” idea may be the best and only option left.

Where the medical condition no longer allows for the continuation of one’s career, and yet the Federal or Postal employee believes that he or she can still remain productive in the employment arena, it is indeed a novel approach for a benefit to pay for one’s inability to perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s job, and yet allow concurrently for the Federal or Postal employee to enter into the private sector, obtain a second vocation, and make up to 80% of what one’s former position currently pays.

For the Federal or Postal employee who is considering 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, it is precisely that allowance of continuation of productivity which fairly recognizes that there is not necessary incompatibility between a medical condition and contribution of talents.

Like the novel genre and the novel idea, they both acknowledge the penultimate value of human creativity, and allow for the characters to develop in the unfolding saga of a story yet untold.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire