Medical Retirement for Federal & Postal Employees: Isolation

It is a state which many declare to be desired; but, in reality, human beings are social and political animals (the latter term applied in an Aristotelian sense), and a true state of it becomes an insular havoc of desperate insanity.

Isolation is used in penal institutions as a means of punishment.  Whether it has a rehabilitative effect is questionable, but the policy is generally to impart upon the prisoner a stripping and depriving of a needed human experience — that of contact with others — and by punishing the individual, to allegedly “motivate” the offending party into behaving in an orderly manner in the future.  However, human beings possess great forces of creativity.  Stories from the Guantanamo facilities reveal a wide range of ingenuities in communication methods employed when “solitary confinement” is imposed upon multiple individuals.

In the end, the policy of isolation is often ineffective, and merely serves as an extreme measure of punishment which motivates not the human appetitive sense of behavioral modification, but cuts deeply into a profound sense of resentment and hatred.

In the general population, we have come to fool ourselves into believing that a blinking screen can replace actual human contact.  The worldwide pandemic has revealed the fissures of such thinking, and has tested the extremes of isolation.

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 under FERS, the sense of isolation can be felt from not being able to engage in the multiple essential elements of the position — of participating in conferences; of engaging with other coworkers; of missing time from work because of doctor’s appointments, etc.

Further, actual isolation is often exaggerated in the mind, where the mental isolation becomes disproportionately viewed and exponentially harmful to a person’s self-image.

Contact a retirement attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and consider the option of filing a FERS Disability Retirement application.  As isolation is the harbinger of a future yet uncertain, FERS Disability Retirement may be the ray of hope which opens the jailhouse door to a mind which is willing to be motivated.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

FERS Disability Retirement: The House that Happiness Built

Later in life, we tend to get into the “preservation mode” — of trying to hold onto the house that happiness built.  We don’t want to move despite the fact that steep stairs and multiple floors are never conducive to old age.  Youth was full of dreams and hope; happiness was the dream of building, of starting a family (or so it once was) and doing things for the future.  No problem could be foreseen that could not be overcome, for the future was bright, hope sprang eternally and the sunrise each morning was something to behold.  But that life could remain in such an optimistic mode of living.  Divorce, tragedy, death, illness, loss of career — such pablum is often unthinkable, until it becomes a reality.

For Federal employees or U.S. Postal workers who have had a setback because of an illness or a medical condition, filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS is a way of preserving the house that happiness built.  Sometimes, a medical condition begins to prevent the Federal or Postal worker from performing the essential elements of his or her job, and thus must file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits. When that time comes, FERS Disability Retirement is a benefit that is meant to help those who may be able to remain productive in some other capacity, but not in the particular type of job that he or she works in.

Consult with an OPM Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law for further details, and don’t let the problems of life threaten the house that happiness built.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Expertise

What constitutes it, and who determines the status of when it is achieved?  We hear about people who are “experts” in this or that, referring to either experience, association or credentials, and based upon that, we accept their status of being an “expert” in the field.  Can that be undermined by personal experience?

Say a person has a Ph.D. in a given field, has worked in the capacity of that field for 30 years, and everyone in the field refers to him as the “resident expert” or “the best of the best” in the field; and yet, in a given situation calling for his or her expertise, he or she fails, is wrong, or otherwise falls short of having provided any competent input.  Does that undermine the expert’s status as an expert, or does one shrug one’s shoulders and say, “Well, you can’t be right all of the time”?  Say a “non-expert”, during the gathering of expertise and amassing of various opinions in making a critical decision, suddenly pipes up and says something contrary to what Dr. X – with-the-Ph.D-with-30-years-of-experience believes and has stated, but in the end he turns out to be right — does that make him or her the new resident expert?

There are, of course, the various logical fallacies — like the fallacy of “association by reputation” or of presumed certitude based upon past experiences (refer to David Hume, for example); but the ultimate question may come down to a simple grammatical one: is the concept used as a noun, an adjective or an adverb?  How does one “gain” expertise, or attain the status of an “expert”, and can it be by experience alone, a credential earned, or by reputation gained — or a combination of all three?

How did Bernie Madoff swindle so many people for so many years?  Was he considered an “expert” in financial matters, and what combination of the tripartite status-making byline (i.e., reputation, experience and credentialing) did he possess to persuade so many to be drawn to him?  Or, is it sometimes merely greed and a proclivity of vulnerability to a good storyteller enough to persuade one that a certain-X is an “expert”?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have come to a point in their lives and careers where a medical condition has begun to impact one’s ability and capacity to perform one or more of the critical or “essential” elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, a certain level of expertise may be necessary before preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

Ultimately, it is not “expertise” or some prior reputation that is important, but the accuracy of information received and the truth of the knowledge relied upon — and for that, one should do due diligence in researching not merely the “credentials” of those who declare some “expertise” in the area of Federal Disability Retirement Law, and not even self-puffery of self-promoting success, but in addition, an instinct as to the truth of what is stated.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: Intrusion upon the inviolable refuge

We all hold, savor and protect them; and whether they are physical escapes, relational interludes or mere cognitive distractions, they are the corners of secluded quietudes which serenely exist in the abandoned crossroads of time, like unbeaten dirt paths down lonely prairies of uncut grass wavering in the morning breeze of timeless passivity.

Perhaps it is watching a favorite television show; or of morning jogs leading to a little-used, covered bridge which tells of whispered pasts, history untold, and marvels unwitnessed but for the overhanging tress which record speechless events; or even the moments throwing a ball with one’s dog, where boundless energy is witnessed and with awe of language bonded by facial licks and warmth of hugs, that timeless memory is captured within the framework of human needs and wants.

The inviolable refuge is the shack we have built, and to which we escape and recede from the problems and complexities of civilization too weighty to bear without.  Those distracting hobbies, of collecting when amassing becomes a fetish, or when childhood dreams never amounted to much but where echoes of angry voices haunting us for innocence extinguished and promises unkept; those are the times when we close the door and lock it from inside, in order to regain the equilibrium lost in the maze of daily clatter.

Medical conditions have an invasive nature to them, where escape can never be completely pursued or accomplished.  Further, when medical conditions begin to invade the capacity of one to escape from the daily toils of the world, and where the universe of struggles becomes too much to bear and the crossing of lines held separate and apart by sheer force of willpower can no longer be rectified, then it is time to take steps to ameliorate the intrusive consequences.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers whose lives become consumed by the tripartite evils of work, medical conditions and the inability to fine refuge away from the creeping tides of problematic struggles, consideration needs to be given to advancing towards another horizon.

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 is a “next-step” reflection for any Federal or Postal worker who has recognized that where a medical condition begins to prevent the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal positional duties, and work therefore begins to intrude upon one’s personal concerns and struggles, then the demarcation between pleasure and pain becomes so confounded that all pathways for the requisite escape begin to close.

Each of us needs a refuge of quietude; and whether such haunts of escapism is satisfied by a quarter placed in a juke box, or travels to exotic destinations whether in physical flight or mental dreams, when life intrudes upon the inviolable refuge of our own creations, it is time to take affirmative steps to proceed and advance, in order to protect those hollow reeds of wavering wants waiting to whisper the sounds of silence.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Avoidance and Delay

Human beings have an uncanny capacity for avoidance.  In the greater genus of the universe we identify as the “Animal Kingdom”, where survival of the fittest determines the genetic viability of the evolutionary scales of neutral justice, avoidance means potential death, and delay constitutes a certainty for an untimely demise.  For, as thought and reflection is the pause between an event and a necessary response, so avoidance and delay is that interlude between necessity and regret.

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 one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties as a Federal Employee or a U.S. Postal Worker, the avoidance of the inevitable, and the delay for the obvious, often becomes an intransigent approach to life’s misgivings.

The act of 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, is thought of as a step of finality — an admission to one’s self that the battle has been lost, the war’s outcome has been determined, and the cards dealt must now be played, with nothing left to trade in or replace.  That is the “short view”, as colored by the perspective of avoidance and delay.  The “long view” is that there is actually life after Federal Service, and potentiality for growth beyond the U.S. Postal Service.

We become entrenched in the habits of our own making, and while filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through OPM may seem like a step of finality, it is actually just a step in a different direction, where one can open up new avenues for a second vocation, while at the same time securing a financial future for stability and further growth.

Avoidance and delay — they are the price one may pay for the limitations imposed by our own lack of imagination, but the greater canvas of life opens up the power and creativity hidden within the deep recesses of a childhood potentiality we once held on to, but somehow let go in this journey we call “life”, which often puts us down and tramples upon the flights of a child’s wide-eyed vision of the greater universe.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: House of Cards

We have all built them as children; those shantytown assemblages like the poverty-stricken and make-shift huts constructed by corrugated debris gathered from refuse and discarded materials, flimsy and ready to collapse, if not by architectural fault lines, then certainly from the sudden and malicious puff of air emitted by one’s younger brother or sister tiptoeing  up from behind in a sneak attack.  The House of Cards — they test the dexterity and patience of one’s character, and simultaneously represent anything built on a precarious foundation, including business ventures, family relationships, and of life itself.

For the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal worker who suffers from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to impact one’s ability and capacity to perform the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal positional duties, the concept of a House of Cards can become quite personal, and in the modern proverbial metaphor, “hit close to home”.

Daily, the precarious and tenuous state of one’s employment status is tested by sudden and unexpected winds of fate, by sneak attacks and underhanded methods of operational malice.  A sudden stir of the atmosphere, a deliberate act of adversity, or the unsuspected whisper of undermining; they all amount to the same:  an attempt to further weaken the foundations which were already being tested.

The option the Federal or Postal employee needs to consider, is to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, because if the foundation of one’s life has already become shaky, the fall itself is an inevitability when confronted by the vast behemoth of the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service.

Just as 2 out of the 3 little pigs came to understand and appreciate the necessity of a firm foundation, so the Federal or Postal employee should see the wisdom in fleeing from under the House of Cards, and consider filing for Federal OPM Disability Retirement benefits; for, they ran to the third when they could, and lucky for them, the Big Bad Wolf could not get to them — at least not in some versions of the tale.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: Nature’s Purposive Divide

Teleological ascription accounts for the rational foundation behind the activity of an organism, and explains the “why”, but not that it necessarily “is” or how it came to be.  Inertia is the very opposite, or perhaps in Heidegger’s universe, the “nothingness” as opposed to “being”.  When bees swarm in a frenzy, there is a “reason” for their activity; and just as the skittishness of a herd portends a sensing of danger, so the aggregation of ants streaming back and forth from a given point normally means a food source attracting for plunder.

We may speak about these occurrences in academic and esoteric ways, but the underlying foundation to it all is actually quite simple, but not necessarily simplistic:  Nature provides for a purpose to pursue, and that is what divides the living from the inertia which surrounds us.  And the rule of Nature and the idea of teleological impulse is that, when we lose that purposive divide, we become like the non-living substance which everywhere reminds us of the corollary of life:  death, and the loss of one’s soul.

Constancy of deterioration, progressive destruction, systematic downgrading, and persistent harassment can dampen the soul; but it is ultimately the loss of Nature’s purposive divide which finally stamps out the glowing flame within one’s soul.

For the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal worker, unbeknownst because of the flurry of daily activity, it is often the meaningfulness of the work one engages, which provides for that teleological impulse.  When a medical condition begins to pervade, and systematically denigrate and degrade the quality of that aspect of meaningfulness, and further, when the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service constantly and persistently acts to exacerbate and rob one’s joy of the projects of life, then it is time to consider 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.

Federal Disability Retirement through OPM allows for a further teleological chance and opportunity, by first securing a lifetime annuity, then allowing for earning income in the private sector and beginning a second career or vocation.  While many may not consider the securing of a Federal Disability Retirement annuity as a meaningful endeavor for one’s financial security, it is precisely the stability of income which allows for the Federal or Postal employee to turn one’s energies upon other and more important things, and to allow for Nature’s purposive divide to propel one forth into the community of men and women who separate themselves from the mass of humanity who see drones and crestfallen vestiges of souls who once rushed where fools had remained and lost that flickering flame of teleological pull.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire