FERS Disability Retirement from OPM: Options

We all have them; they are ‘out there’ in the objective, nether world.  Since they exist, the only remaining question is, Will we effectively exercise them?

Recognition is the first step; identification of the various ones in their plenitude is the second one; and finally choosing which one is the best course as the final and best decision.  Most of us fail to take the first step, and often skip over the second, and rush into the third without much thought.

In every challenging circumstance, there are almost always multiple options o choose from; it is up to us to seek them out, sift through them, analyze the potentiality of each, and then to make the best choice, whether based upon prudence or idealized empowerment.

It is this last step which often befuddles us;  For, the resulting consequences may require courage and fearless sacrifice — a giving up of something substantial for the short term in order to keep one’s eye upon what past philosophers have described as the “good, the true and the beautiful”.

And what if we run out of options?  Sometimes, patience is then required.  Time allowed to solve or resolve some issues is often the best option to choose, and likely to be the hardest to recognize, as patience often requires the most difficult of actions — that of inaction.

For Federal and Postal Employees contemplating preparing an effective application for Federal Disability Retirement under FERS, patience is sometimes called for; for, the process itself is a long and arduous bureaucratic morass, and it must be prepared carefully and meticulously.

If you have a medical condition which prevents you from performing one or more of the essential elements of your Federal Gov. or Postal job, contact a FERS Disability Retirement Lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Law and know what your options are before you take the next and most important steps.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill
Lawyer exclusively representing Federal and Postal employees to secure their Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

 

OPM Disability Retirement Law: Foreign Lands

Reading essays about foreign lands is often challenging where reference points and contexts are often presumed.  One immediately reaches for one’s Smartphone in order to Google the locations in relationship to a country — is it in the south of France, close to Spain?  It is near Paris?

Why that matters is another issue — for, somehow, if we can recognize a known entity, it makes us more comfortable in reading further about a strange area unknown.  Even if we have never been to Paris, we recognize that it is a large metropolitan city and can therefore relate it to our own experiences.  Context is important; reference points to that which is familiar somehow makes for greater understanding, comprehension, and appreciation.

Entering or reading about foreign lands is somewhat akin to preparing an effective application for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS.  The entire concept is strange and foreign to somehow whose life has been dedicated to work and advancement.  To suddenly have to stop working because of a medical condition, and then to file for early medical retirement, is tantamount to traveling to a foreign land.

To be successful in a Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS, it is advisable to contact a “tour guide” — a disability attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and thereby show you the familiar reference points in order to maneuver through the best sights, avoid the dangerous areas and pitfalls within the law, and to get you to the endpoint of the entire process: An approval from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill
Lawyer exclusively representing Federal and Postal employees to secure their Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

 

OPM Disability Retirement Law: Remnants of One’s Self

Remnants, fragments, shadows, a mere ghostly memory — of one’s self; or of one’s former self.  They are all concepts which evoke images: of a past which was once you; a present which is only a part of; a future which is uncertain as to whether you will again become your former self, remain as you are as a mere remnant; or, somewhere in the middle, where you are never what you were before, but you have gained some semblance of your former self.

Medical conditions often determine those issues: They debilitate; they progressively rob; they worsen and deplete; and when you are a Federal or Postal employee and the remnant of one’s self can no longer perform one or more of the essential elements of what you still are required to do in your Federal or Postal job, then it is time to consider filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management under FERS.

Contact an OPM Disability Retirement Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and consider regaining some remnant of your former self.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Postal & Federal Disability Retirement: Opening Up

Flowers do it; shy individuals, traumatized children, people who feel ashamed; and societies, especially our own, as ours is a country that can stay bottled up only for so long.  Whether the opening up of our country will, in retrospect, be deemed to have occurred too soon, will be determined by the coming weeks.

The concept itself — of “opening up” — necessarily implies a previous state of have “closed down”.  It is an interesting combination of words, where a positive term (“opening”) is related with a direction (up) that is often associated with a transcendent location (i.e., heaven), whereas the “other” term (closing) implies a negative concept associated with hell, damnation, the source of punishment and grief, etc.  In either event, we shall see how history views the opening back up of our society.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition that has impacted his or her ability and capacity to perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, “opening up” has always been part of the problem, because to do so would mean to admit that one’s career may have to be changed.

Consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement under FERS, and consult with an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law.  Opening up to an attorney will always be a confidential matter, and it may result in positive advice that can be usefully applied.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Imperceptible light shifts

They are almost imperceptible; in any event, we would not otherwise notice them but for the altered hue in morning’s glory of pink shades and yellow gleams of delight.  From one angle and perspective, one might miss the subtlety of a purple shade not otherwise naturally given to observation; from another, a shift, quite impossible to grasp and declare, but there nevertheless, and that is precisely what occurs with the imperceptible light shifts we miss in the daily lives of busy modernity that destroys and in incremental deterioration withdraws from grace.

But that we had the time, or made the way, for viewing and studying the changes of a world’s color; but we act as though we are colorblind, and rush through each day without noticing the alterations of the sensory universe we occupy.

Nature itself is a deceiver of sorts; from the sun’s rise to its apex of brilliance to the fall into twilight behind the arc of earth’s perimeter, we are unable to view the brightness directly, lest we blind ourselves in such a foolish attempt, or otherwise try and comprehend such source of solar energy in a figurative sense like the Cave Analogy in Plato’s Republic, of that chained soul who lives only within the shadows of appearances not reflective of reality.

No, it is the inability to feel the rotation of the ground beneath us that first welcomes the rising sun, then imperceptibly travels the distance to give us the gift of light, only to incrementally and with deliberative direction progress towards the pathway of twilight’s descent that allows for event a glint of the nether world.

Imperceptible light shifts may be seen in the refractive beauty upon a crystal’s gleam, or upon a clearing in a forest after a burst of rain; but it is in life generally that we must keep an eye out for the beauty of change, in order to be in consonance with a universe that is divorced from our instinctive sensibilities as the animals we once were in roaming the earth like the American Indian who followed the migration of the buffalo herd.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are impeded in life by 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 position occupied, those life-startling but imperceptible light shifts are like the subtle hints of the body’s agony:  They tell us things that we already know, but are too stubborn to see.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is never an easy perspective of a long and arduous road to take; but like those imperceptible light shifts, it is the gleam of a future’s hope that must pave the way in prompting that which is necessary, as opposed to what we merely desire out of life.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: Of garbage, debris and leftovers

The first is that which we outright discard for loss of value or unrepentant conclusion of worth; the second, what remains after destruction or usage; the last, what is set aside or left behind for multiple reasons, including everything referred to in the first and second, as well as a sense that a loss of appetite resulted in security of its existence without any judgment upon the core of its essence.  Because of our own linguistic laziness, we tend to just lump them all together; but distinctions in language-games matter, and what we do with each, how we treat them, and when we act upon them, requires more than recognizing the subtlety of differentiation we may overlook.

We associate garbage with the smells of rot and decay, and set aside vast areas for landfills to bury and cover over in the remoteness of society’s outskirts, where in lands of impoverishment and suffering starvation, the outcasts of society gather just to pick at the best of the worst.  Of debris, the wealthier people and nations as a whole simply discard and start over, again.  Those who can ill-afford to simply begin anew, will often try and salvage what debris can be reconstituted, and attempt to rebuild lives destroyed and damaged from hurricanes, wildfires and tornadoes, or other such disasters pummeled by nature’s fury or man’s carelessness.

And for leftovers, it is appropriate that it should be the last in the tripartite of linguistic examinations.  For, it applies to foods, to various aggregations of detritus, and to human beings themselves.  Of entities inorganic or inert, they can represent the extra screw mistakenly inserted with the package received, or the cheap trinket purchased in a foreign land but unable to fit into the bulging suitcase and discarded under the unmade bed in the hotel room left unpaid.  Of foods and other organic matter, it is the lesson taught by an overbearing parent, where loggerheads with stubborn children evoke stories once heard and continue as mythologies which – like unicorns and 3-ring circuses, never quite match the smell-test of reality – propagate like mice in the basement of dank and darkness, where the utterance, “When I was your age, what you leave as leftovers used to be the main course!” was but a boast echoing with hollow discourse upon ears deaf with such trite admonitions.  But the more serious manner of the meaning is reflected by the human cost of how we treat one another.  For, it is the “leftovers” of society which we forget about in the teaching lessons of wealth and abundance.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are shunned aside because of 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 positional duties, the conceptual construct of what is a “leftover” is a poignant reminder of what once was, of what can still be, and a hint of hope for a future without the harassment, intimidation and constant barrage of aggressive threats propounded without concern for consequences. For, it is the lesson of the leftover which we should all bear in mind.

As any reference in this day and age of a “Biblical” concept is immediately dismissed and ignored – (remember?  Of how treating the “least” is tantamount to re-crucifying at each turn?) – we must therefore embrace the lessons of our own childhoods.  For, in the end, the Federal employee and U.S. Postal worker must make a decision of self-worth, and decide whether or not it is of any value to be treated as the vegetables untouched or the morsels undisturbed; or, perhaps, to “move on” and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, and become again the “main meal” as the lesson taught once recognized, in this universe where garbage, debris and leftovers are treated all in the same manner and upon the same plate of empty promises.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: A penchant for excess

Do the historicity and context of a given time determine the individual’s proclivity for behavior otherwise deemed unnatural?  Does that concept even apply anymore, as normative constraints are denigrated, societal conventions become ignored, and new frontiers bypassing the ethos of communities are no more than mere irritants to swat away?

There has always been, of course, a penchant for excess inherent in the human essence; the British Royal Family, the French aristocracy, the Russian Czar and the modern totalitarian state where wealth and abundance allows an opening for the limitless reach of man’s appetite and predilection for excess.

Does the quiet neighbor next door — that meek and unassuming character straight out of the parallel universe of Walter Mitty’s caricature, of the bespectacled individual always referred to as “growing old with grace and a potbelly” — become a tyrant upon winning the lottery?  Is it inevitable that he files for divorce the day after his bank account becomes flush with an astronomical sum, abandons his responsibilities, denies his lineage to aunts and uncles who suddenly want to become the proverbial long-lost cousins who always loved him but were too shy to previously approach — is there an identifiable genetic code of wrap-around dimensions coiling within each of our cells waiting to embrace an inevitable penchant for excess?

And what of our behavior towards our fellow men and women — is human nature so predictable that we fear the unravelling of ourselves, and thus do we cloak our ugliness and conceal our inner motives precisely because, like the largest organ covering our bodies — the skin which provides layers of protection to make our appearance presentable and unblemished — we require constructs of artificial boundaries because we ourselves cannot abide by the liberty we are granted?

These thoughts are nothing new for the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker who encounters man’s penchant for excess once the Federal or Postal employee shows the signs of weakness which accompany a medical condition.  Suddenly, the camaraderie and comity previously shown by coworkers becomes an unconcealed bevy of whispering conspiracies, like the silence of horrific quietude of a man drifting in a shark-infested ocean upon an overturned boat, waiting for that first bump of a forewarning to test the reaction before the initial attack.

For that Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker who suffers from a medical condition, such that the medical condition must by necessity lead to preparing, formulating and 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, the penchant for excess as revealed by actions of the Agency, coworkers and people you once thought highly of, is really nothing more than the unravelling of that which was always there, but forever hidden but for that invisible thread which holds the fabric of society together — of self-restraint, like the distant echo of a forgotten discipline, lost in the meditation of a Zen monastery.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: The numerical veil

Statistical constructs indicate group shifts and movements; numbers, based upon controlled samplings, provide the substantive fodder for analysis of trends and patterns of population deviancies.  There is, however, the question of the incommensurate nature between mathematical paradigms and linguistic application; stated more simply, Do numbers hide more than reveal, and can anything be extrapolated from them and interpreted in terms we can understand and comprehend?

To a winner of the lottery, the numerical phantasm “one in a billion” remains meaningless; and to the dismissive statistical irrelevancy stated in language more readily comprehended, that there is a greater chance of dying in an automobile accident than from a shark attack, becomes inconsequential and of little comfort if you are laying in a hospital bed with a good part of your flesh missing from such a traumatic event.  That’s the problem with numbers, of course, and the use, misuse and abuse of statistical analysis; in the end, it depends upon how it is used, the methodology of discourse, and the manner of application.

To be hit by lightening may well be more uncommon than death by drowning, but if your job is to be a caddy for an eccentric billionaire who enjoys golfing on days of severe weather patterns, the generalizations ascribed by comparative mathematical analysis may be somewhat skewed.  And, of course, for romance of young couples who scoff at divorce rates and patterns affirmed by celebrity lives and the cultural meltdown pervasive throughout, the lack of life experiences, the want of provocation through trials and turmoils yet to be encountered and not yet encumbering, allows for hope, charity and a sense of optimism despite the universe which surrounds of cynical diatribes.

We take comfort in the veil of numbers, precisely because we can manipulate them in the ways we want.  Facing a bleak outlook, we can justify resistance with a dismissive wave of the hand (or that invisible wand of magic and sorcery) and declare, “Well, the chances are…”  Numbers never tell of the human emotions and toil of reality; they remain as cold mathematical calculations, jiggered and manipulated by the picture of emotionless bureaucrats who wear spectacles to magnify the inconsequential harm imparted upon the lives left behind.

And for Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management?  Such individuals, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, become part and parcel of the statistical conundrum who once had names, faces and identities, but somehow became relegated into the numerical aggregate of “those” people who departed by filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application through OPM, all because they could no longer perform one or more of the essential elements of the positional duties assigned.

Does such fear of becoming a mere irrelevancy of statistical obscurity make the Federal or Postal employee pause, despite the chronic pain or the psychiatric despondency which tells of the urgency to file for the benefit?  Probably.  Yet, beyond the numerical veil which hides, each Federal or Postal employee who departed and left behind such a statistical imprint, go on to live productive lives thereafter, with ongoing emotional ups and downs, as real people, living authentic lives untold by the hidden abyss echoing from the chambers of silent digits.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement: When we used to speak of meaningful things

Perhaps the negation of ideas trickles down, just as water from a crack in the roof tiles; of Derrida, Foucault and the deconstruction movement after the lengthy period of disillusionment represented by the French Existentialists headed by Camus and Sartre; for, if meaning constitutes parity and the loss of hierarchies and paradigms in crumbling corners of inconvenient truths, then Orwell’s prediction of how totalitarianism will infect society with the tools of our own making, will come about sooner than we thought possible.

Let us not speak of Logical Positivism and how the expungement of ethics and metaphysics from kitchen table discussions resulted in the loss of meaning, value and truth; for, if validity of a statement is determined from on high in the ivory towers of Russell, Wittgenstein and Ayers, et al., one has only to look at the state of British society today to realize that while the island continent allowed for profundity of thought in the isolation of its heyday, its impact and influence should have remained contained in order to spare the rest of mankind.

There was a time when we used to talk about meaningful days.  Oh, it doesn’t refer necessarily to what is said, but more as to the discretion of what is kept silent.  For, it is the pause between thought and spoken word which reflects the depth of thoughtfulness; and, in modernity, the comma of silence between the typed garble considered a sentence, and the push of that button which shoots it into the eternal space of the Internet.  Just take a cursory preview of random Facebook and Twitter pages; of the inane, the insane and the intemperate; there was once, long ago, a time when work and toil to put bread on the table prevented the leisure of thoughtlessness allowance for indiscretion of a spoken word.

To be wrong is one thing; most mistakes are correctible and even forgivable; it is the engagement of lack of thought, discretion and unadulterated vacuity of breathtaking stream of words spoken, shared and disseminated without care, which destroys the society of binding values and becomes replaced with angry shouts of rights and privileges, and more so by those who engage in the self-immolation of devaluating acts.

Greater quantification of information does not implicate knowledge, leaving aside the concept of wisdom; instead, as Orwell knew so well, words mean something.  We tend to think that the more said, the greater volume of voice, and the increased amassing of a library of information, somehow leads to a smarter society.  It is, instead, quite the opposite, and the negative effect of thrashing about to escape from quicksand; the more we say, the stupider we appear.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are contemplating preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, it is important to understand that obtaining a cogent and effective medical narrative, in conjunction with preparing a compelling Statement of Disability on SF 3112A, are the two mainstays of a high-octane Federal Disability Retirement packet which increases the chances of a successful outcome.

Federal and Postal employees who are seeking to file for Federal OPM Disability Retirement benefits need not worry about speaking or discussing meaningful things; the tragedy of a medical condition, by its very nature, is a significant event which impacts upon a life, a career and a future.  Yes, there was a time when we used to speak of meaningful things, but those days are over — but for the intersection of human lives when words really matter, and lives are actually lived.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire