FERS Disability Retirement Benefits: Fooling ourselves

It takes extraordinary intelligence to play the fool, and an even greater cleverness to fool oneself; just read a few lines from Shakespeare’s King Lear, and the interaction between Lear and the Fool, and one realizes the extensive capacity of self-indulgence in the deception of man in his need to guard his own ego.

In fooling one’s self, does one fool others, as well?  If a person takes on a persona, lives in a fantasy world, creates an identity separate and apart, and yet becomes consumed by the double-life to the extent that he or she comes to believe one’s own creative imagination, does the fact that others who knew the person from childhood onward destroy the fool’s own universe of make-believe?

Of the old adage and Biblical admonition that prophets are never accepted in their own hometown — is this because those who know a person from early life, “know better”?

If we fool ourselves only within the contained universe of our own thoughts, and never let the fantasies “seep out” into the objective reality of other’s awareness, have we fooled ourselves?  Others?  Is living a “double-life” the same as fooling ourselves and others, or is it only when we fool those closest to us where the “double” makes a difference?

What about hiding a medical condition?  What if a person is on anti-depressants or other psychotropic medication regimens, and yet everyone else believes that person to be the envy of the world, of the very definition of “happiness” exponentially quantified, until one day that very person is committed to an intensive psychiatric hospital and it comes out that he or she is the most unhappiest of individuals — has that person fooled himself, others, or both?

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, a great deal of “fooling” must go on in the interim.  You may overcompensate; you may appear to others to be “just fine”; and the tailored seams of normalcy may continue on for some time, until the wear and tear of self-deception begins to take its toll.

Preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is often the first honest step towards being “true to one’s self”, and like the fool in Shakespeare’s King Lear, it is the capacity of the King fooling himself, and not the honesty of the fool, that makes for the tragedy that ensues.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement Representation: Living Anguish

Two or more meanings can be gleaned, often depending upon the emphasis one places upon the sequence of words uttered.  One is the experience of the state itself; the other, the active phenomena in the presence of now.  In either form, the clear implication embraces the state of anguish, whether in a living state, or by living it.

Is the state of existence in modernity itself a constant and unavoidable situation involving anguish?  Is the craziness of the lives we live — of the inevitable rush of each day; the interference of work into personal lives, and the incessant drum of technology without a moment’s pause of temporary cessation — the cause of such anguish, or is the anguish felt merely a reflection of who we are?  Is it any different from the days just following the Last Great War when men and women bemoaned the state of absurdity while drinking coffee at sidewalk cafes in Paris?

Living anguish — again, whether in the form of “aliveness” or meaning merely that it is a state of being we find ourselves in — is a simple fact of modernity’s choice of existence.  For, except for those who can afford to live a life of luxury attended to by servants, cooks, butlers and chauffeurs, do the rest of us choose the living anguish, or do circumstances impose the state of being without any say-so in the life chosen?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, where 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 — of course the living anguish is exponentially quantified, and often the only remaining alternative is to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

Part of the living anguish of life itself is in the very limitations of our choices presented, and when a medical condition begins to impact one’s livelihood and the capacity to continue with one’s career, the fact that there is a choice — of filling for Federal Disability Retirement — somewhat alleviates the “livingness” of the anguish we experience, and allows for an alternative to the anguish felt in living with an increasingly debilitating medical condition.

But that choice of getting beyond living anguish must begin with the first steps in preparing a Federal Disability Retirement application, and that starts with a consultation with an attorney who can begin to guide the Federal or Postal employee away from the living anguish by preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Fear of one’s shadow

What does that metaphor mean?  Perhaps to different people, different and varying things — of constantly being on edge despite nothing objectively to be anxious about; of fearing the worst around every bend and corner; of imagining impending doom despite the best of times; of never being able to enjoy that which has been attained or accomplished; and a multitude of similar circumstances that evoke an image of a person who remains in a perpetual flux of emotional turmoil.

Does this describe you?  Perhaps there is a reason — some Freudian abscess deep within the damaged psyche of an individual, unidentified and undetected, originating from a trauma experienced in childhood; or, he’s just a “nervous sort of fellow”.  Fear of one’s shadow is that person who expects the worst even within circumstances that highlight the best.  It is not just a lack of confidence, nor a pessimism that pervades against the reality of the illuminated world; rather, it is the expectation of disaster when reality fails to coincide with shadows that fail to appear even when all around you darkness dominates.

Perhaps we have done a disservice to this newest generation, and the one before, by always encouraging them with hope, never criticizing them, and allowing them to always think “positively” about themselves, their expectations and their future.  Then, when reality abuts against the expectation of anticipated success, this young generation falls apart and is inadequately prepared to handle failure.

Fear of one’s shadow is often the byproduct of an upbringing unprepared and unfortunately ill-prepared to become responsive to failures in life’s cycle of successes and failures.  It is, in many ways, a protective mechanism, where fear is the dominant factor in order to shield one from the reality of the world around.

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, the fear of one’s shadow may not be so unrealistic — especially as it concerns how the agency or the Postal Service will act, react, respond to or otherwise initiate sanctions, actions and administrative proposals if you fail to return to a previous level of productivity and attendance regularity.  For, in the end, the Federal Agency and the Postal Service are not in a protective role; rather, they are often the adversary that needs to be constantly reminded of “the laws” that protect and preserve human dignity and contractual responsibilities.

For Federal employees and Postal workers who need to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, remember always that it is not one’s own shadow that needs to be feared, but rather, the looming figure behind your own shadow that may come unexpectedly to attack you, and that is why you need to consult with an experienced attorney in preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether you are under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Attorney Representation Federal Disability Retirement: The Farmer’s market

They are now in most localities, in communities throughout, cropping up like a movement that pervades imperceptibly in quiet amalgamations like forces that cannot be seen but are still known to exist.

Farmer’s markets represent the strength of a community, the support of a town and the reverting-back of a city, to a time where local farmers were important and the packaged foods that come from foreign countries and line up on the shelves of corporate supermarkets are rebuffed by “buying local” and “supporting the local farmer”.

There was once a time, some many decades ago, when every town went to the corner butcher to get the day’s cut of meat; when farmers grew crops for one’s own family, and for the community within the bird’s eye-view from the door of one’s house; when traveling to the next largest city, or even crossing a state-line, was a big enough deal to give kisses and hugs.

Then, someone “thought big” and believed that refrigeration, transportation in mass quantities first across state lines, then from one side of the country to the other, then from across the great seas – that, from such a grand idea, hunger and starvation would be a problem solved, and profits would soar and the world as a whole would be a better place to occupy.

The pendulum of history always swings back, however, as the movement upon corporate structures was countered with “bigger is not better” and resulting in the idea that the “small” community, the “local” foods and the backyard gardener represented the healthier choice of living.

Somehow, there is a spectrum that always seems to prevail, that arises from within the innate need of human nature: of wanting to grow larger when there is smallness, and wanting to harken back to smallness when one has grown too large.  Yet, in most instances, a compromise of sorts must be accepted; for, once the spectrum has run to one extreme, it is nigh impossible to recapture that which was lost.

That is often the problem for the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal worker who has “grown” in one’s career, advanced, received all of the deserved accolades, etc.  To become “small” again is difficult to accept.  Yet, when a medical condition begins to prevail upon the Federal or Postal employee, and it becomes impossible to perform all of the essential elements of the positional duties of the Federal or Postal job, the necessity of consider a Federal Disability Retirement becomes an inevitability.

What stops or pauses the Federal or Postal employee from initiating a Federal Disability Retirement application?  Often, it is that same psychology of having to resort back to “being small” – of downsizing, of “giving up.”  But always remember that one must prioritize one’s life, and without one’s health, there is no life to enjoy.

In the end, the Farmer’s Market is the ideal most of us strive for – of smallness that is manageable, with a healthy side to it of knowing where the food comes from; and filing a Federal Disability Retirement application is similar to visiting the local Farmer’s Market, where the accomplishments of life’s gifts are found most in the small things we cherish.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: The mouse in the night

They are heard and often unseen; a scratch somewhere from the far corner of the room; a blur along the space between the couch and the wall; and the mouse in the night scurries along, making some amount of noise more greatly enhanced when the quietude of a late evening descends upon us.

Should we put out a mouse trap?  The problem with that is that the dogs might come down in the middle of the night, smell the cheese and get his nose trapped and yowl with pain, waking everyone up.  Or, hope that the mouse in the night minds his own business, scurries about without anyone noticing, and we can all pretend “as if” he doesn’t live in the same house as you do.

Like spiders, centipedes and other crawlers, the mouse in the night is there, has been, and perhaps always will be; we only try and rid the home of it when we hear it and it becomes bothersome.  That’s how we often treat medical conditions, kids who are nuisances, and neighbors who are irritants – we attend to them only when they reach beyond a level of tolerance or a spectrum of acceptability, and then it is often too late.

When does “not yet” and “too late”, or almost too late meet on the spectrum of provocation?  Does the mouse in the night become the provocateur merely because we hear him and imagine the slow but steady destruction he imposes, or the danger of the wife or daughter in the house who may scream suddenly (or is that being sexist to think that only the female gender will react in such a way)?

The mouse in the night is very much like a medical condition, where it comes and slowly steals one’s energy, eats away at the energy one has stored, and scurries along the contours of the walls in a blur of running confusion.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who need to now consider preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the sudden realization that there is a connection between the medical condition and the slow deterioration of one’s ability to perform all of the essential elements of the job can be likened to the mouse in the night – you always knew it was there and that it was slowly eating away, if not by the noise, then by ignoring its presence; you just kept putting it out of your mind because of those “other reasons”, like the trouble it takes, the fact of facing up to it, the avoidance, and maybe even the hope that it would just go away.

But neither mice nor medical conditions go away, but remain as problems that keep gnawing until the hole in the wall becomes too large to ignore.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: Indicia by quantitative output

Should worth be determined by quota of quantitative output, or is the slow and steady progress of quality and craftsmanship still valued in this world of imported trinkets and trash bins of brevity?  There are reports of a major bankruptcy filing resulting in the inevitable liquidation of a foreign shipping company, and the rumors preceding have already forced stockpiling of goods for the upcoming holiday shopping expectations.

The interconnecting tentacles of international trade foregoes any differentiation these days, between “domestic” or “foreign” companies, and the deep reverberations and repercussions of shortages felt reveals and unravels of a society addicted to the notion of accumulation, no matter what or where the source.  We can no longer travel to destinations of quiet reserve, because everyone does so – with Smartphones and photographs instantly posted, and of the meditative monastery no longer devout with quietude of prayer, but filled with flashbulbs of visceral interruptions.  And of the unique product made with time and care?  Of hand-held tools and the carpenter’s reflective repose?

Quotas define modernity; it is the quantitative output that prevails in a factory-like universe where the individual stitching has no mark of uniqueness or character of identification.  Perhaps Marx had at least the principle of labor’s loss of meaning right; when the product loses the manifold entailment of the soul which guides the hands, then the character of creation is destroyed and the essence of the mold becomes subsumed beneath the greed of desire.

It is the celebrity-status and stature of glimmer and glamour which poses to characterize the indicia of success; and the goal of that flashpoint of destination’s pinnacle of “arriving” is determined by the indicia of quantitative output.  How else to explain the constant boast that Americans work longer hours, have less vacations, spend fewer time with family and friends – but to show the rest of the world who sit idly by with envy and despair, that the price to pay in order to attain the grand scheme of such blissful existence is to undermine the family structure, to desecrate the common hold of a community, and to destroy the very fabric of society’s worth?  We pay a price, all right, and that cost transacted is the self-destruction of the essence of humanity.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition no longer allows the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal employee’s positional duties, the pressure to keep up with the quantitative output comes to a flashpoint where health intersects with productivity, and the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service takes such data into account in deciding the worth of your life.

The indicia of quantitative output are the means by which the determining end is calculated.  At that critical juncture, the Federal or Postal employee must make a Solomon’s decision:  Health, or the job.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have come to that point of decision-making, preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be ultimately submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, becomes not just a necessity, but a call to action.  For, in the end, the indicia of quantitative output is someone else’s measure of worth – and that “someone else” is certainly not taking into account the value of one’s health in a society self-destructive in its juggernaut of purposeless regression.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Medical Retirement: Dickens, Salinger & Capote

It is always dangerous to offer an overview of complexity; simplicity of explanation often teeters upon the precipice of superficiality, and when it comes to the psychology of people, we normally get it wrong.  Yet, we can try.

For Dickens, the childhood experiences of destitution and humble beginnings allowed for a magnification of love for humanity borne of cruelty in childhood.  In Salinger, we see the pent-up destruction of a young man whose anguish was molded through sights, sounds and experiences devastated by war.  And of Capote, we glean the lasting scars of rejection, first with minor cuts and burns by the divorce of his parents, then deeper in being bounced about by relatives, only to stab him with disappointment when his childhood friend, Harper Lee, received the accolades and universal love he sought so passionately, needed beyond all others, but never felt but for the loss of that which he could not embrace.

The life experiences each encountered reflected, in the end, upon the exhibition of an inner soul:  Dickens continued to provide the public with readings of characters forever loved, and embraced the sea of admiration which was the source of his limitless imaginations, borne of a world which tried to contain him with a system of caste and class.

Salinger retreated more and more into the insular world of his own safe web of privacy and secrecy, having concluded that the world was not to be trusted, that phoniness lurked in every man’s soul, and the horrors witnessed at the hands of war and concentration camps were evidence enough to deny others anything remaining.

And for Capote — we may sum it up in the cruel but crisp truism upon his death, by fellow author Gore Vidal, who quipped that it was a “good career move”.  Acting ever the fool with drunkenness and debauchery, the public destruction of a talent so extraordinary was a painful sight to witness.

Can we learn anything from these paragons of talent?  Or, are such characters merely of our own creations, snickering at the fact that, even where seemingly boundless talent exists and opportunities reflect limitless choices, self-destruction nevertheless becomes the teleology of choice.  At a minimum, they reveal to us the complexity of human essence, and that what people react to on the outside barely scratches the surface of what remains within.

And this is the same for Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are harassed and intimidated in the workplace, when a medical condition results in the necessity to prepare, formulate and file 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.  For, the coworkers, managers and supervisors who treat the Federal or Postal worker as nothing more than a nuisance through loss of productivity, fails to address the core value of the individual suffering at the hands of consequences not chosen through self-destructive behavior, but merely because of fate of circumstances.

The key for the Federal and Postal worker both, is to choose a path which refuses to submit to self-immolation resulting from the negative experiences at the hands of others; rather, to embrace the love of others as Dickens did, and not retreat into the insular retardation of life as Salinger proposed, or the reverberating echoes made by the empty bottle of alcohol, drowning in later life as Capote consumed, shuddering with the laughter of others and snickering for want of fools in his diminishing stature, ever losing the love which he sought so selfishly.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire