FERS Disability Retirement from OPM: A Bang or a Whimper

We live in a universe of extremes.  People cannot have “reasonable beliefs” for, you are then deemed lacking, and in such a state, somehow a person without the passionate character who is a “true believer”.

The “middle point” which was espoused by Aristotle and the Stoics — of having the calm demeanor and not reactively excitable; of a reasoned approach to every issue; of maintaining a demeanor of the Zen Monk; this approach is now considered dead and irrelevant.

We must all be extremists.  Whatever cause we take up, whichever banner we decide to flagrantly exhibit (on our cars or with signs and banners ugli-fying our homes and front yards), we must go out with either a bang or a whimper.  If with a whimper, at least we tried.  If with a bang, then we have succeeded.

In modernity, it matters not what the substance of the issue is; only as to whether we are “passionate” in our feelings.  For, after decades of focusing upon the validation of our feelings (as opposed to cultivating the rational faculty of our souls), we have now succeeded in upending the importance of governing the feelings.

Yet, in the field of law, there is still a need for a rational, reasoned approach, and for Federal and Postal employees who suffer from a medical condition, it is necessary to contact a lawyer who approaches the issue of Federal/Postal Disability Retirement as a matter of legal and medical necessity, and one who sees each case as not a matter of a Bang or a Whimper, but as a legal issue which needs to be approached in a calm, stoic matter — in applying “the Law”.

Contact a FERS Disability Attorney who will not engage in the Social Media and modern approach of great fanfare, but instead, relies still on the stodgy old way of doing things — of actually speaking with the client, explaining the process, and doing the work himself.  Neither with a Bang or a Whimper, but with a straightforward approach of applying the damn law.

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.

 

Federal Employee Medical Retirement from OPM: The Triangle

Aristotle believed that the three components of a successful argument required: Logos; Ethos; Pathos.  Logos — the potency of a logical, coherent structure.  Ethos — the character and reputation of the speaker who would deliver the argument.  Pathos — the “emotional” element in the argument to be made.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, perhaps the Pathos is already there — of the medical condition itself which has devastated your capacity to continue in your chosen career.  But that is not enough to persuade the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to approve your Federal Disability Retirement application.

You will still need the other two components — a strong legal argument which is coherent and powerful, and the reputation of a FERS Disability Lawyer who is a proven advocate for your Federal Disability Retirement claim.  Contact a Federal Disability Retirement Lawyer today and consider the triangle of a successful Federal Disability Retirement application.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal & Postal Worker Disability Retirement: Diversions

Watching sports is a diversion; reading, writing (no, for most of us, engaging in arithmetic is not a diversion, or at least not a pleasant one); taking a drive, engaging in some artistic endeavor like painting, woodcraft, batiking (or the more simple form of tie-dying that we all did as children); they all divert our attention away from life’s difficulties, challenges and general unpleasantries diffusely appropriated by mere happenstance of “living”.

Is it the diversion that makes the rest of it all worthwhile, or is it the daily grind which makes it worthwhile such that we can engage in those moments of diversions which takes us out of the monotony of repetitive consistency?  Do we need diversions?  Did everyone, all the time, throughout history, forever and a day always engage in diversionary activities?  Or, was there a time in the pure state of nature where survival was always at a cost of constant vigilance, and where diversions were considered as potentially dangerous activities leading to death?

Fortunately, modernity has engendered an unspoken truce — where busy-ness prevails for 5 days of the week, with the sixth being set aside for chores and the seventh (isn’t that what God ordained?) as a day of rest, or for diversions diversely dignified in dapper dalliances of discursive delightfulness (sorry for the alliteration, but it cannot be resisted unless relatively reorganized for really rotten reasons).  Excuse the diversion of amusing myself.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition itself becomes the primary diversion, it is likely time to consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.  Diversions are ultimately meant for relaxation; medical conditions are “anything but” that.

Consult with an attorney who specializes in FERS Disability Retirement Law, lest the diversions that were meant to help us escape from the harshness of the work-a-day world becomes instead another reality of debilitating consequences.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement for Federal & Postal Workers: Faulty Choices

Of course, we all make them; the issue is one of containment, not of avoiding them altogether.  For, the corollary can be equally faulty:  Of indecision until and unless all conditions for perfection can be met.  In other words, the thwarted view that waits until everything is perfect: The perfect life; the perfect marriage; the perfect career; the perfect choice.  To wait for perfection is in and of itself an imperfect choice based upon a faulty choice; it is to let an unattainable end dominate an otherwise attainable goal.

But at what point does one determine that?  Yes, while not all of the information has been ascertained, and perhaps not all conditions met; nevertheless, will we proceed in doing X as opposed to Not-X and take the chance?  That is where “judgment” comes into play — of having the wisdom to make decisions based upon the available resources tapped.

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, faulty choices at the beginning of the process can have negative consequences foreseen and unforeseen.  The key is to limit the faulty choices, and the option to seek counsel and guidance is often the first choice in reaching an attainable goal of success.

In pursuing Federal Disability Retirement benefits, seek the advice and counsel of an experienced attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law; to do so is to limit faulty choices, and that is often the key for a successful outcome in 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

 

Federal Disability Retirement Representation: Private Hells

Wouldn’t a “hell” by definition encompass privacy and insularity?  For, isn’t one of the benefits of commiserating and “sharing” (in the modern parlance) that one expiates the pains and troubles one experiences?  Thus, if a hell is to be a hell, wouldn’t it be in seclusion and in solitary confinement for all eternity; otherwise, the hell described would be less than hell because it would be a lessened state of agony and torture and thus would not be the intended deterrent that such descriptive conclusions would be?

Private hells are the worse kinds of hells, if one were to place them on a spectrum of graduated scales.  It is the hell that cannot be shared with others; cannot be complained about; cannot be dissipated by describing, telling, delineating or implicitly requesting comforting words about; such constitute the worst of torture chambers left in the chaos of one’s mind.  The social animal — the “human being” — is one who derives strength, courage, determination and the will to live by engaging in the very thing that social animals do: talk; tell stories; share troubles; commiserate.

That is often the exponentially exacerbating effect of a medical condition being suffered by a Federal employee — of having to keep it a secret; not being able to be open about it; not sharing because he or she is unable to talk about it for fear of retaliation and the evils of bad intentions.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from such a state of private hell, it is time to begin to prepare, formulate and file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, to be submitted and ultimately decided by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

The private hell of one’s fears and anxieties concerning the entire administrative process of Federal Disability Retirement is often partly due to the strangeness of it all, and consulting with a lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law is often the first best step in extinguishing those flames of agony that are described in ancient scrolls, lest the private hells become public dungeons that flog the soul beyond what the law allows, which can clearly be explained and contained with a private consultation with legal counsel who can guide you out of that private hell by explaining the process of OPM Disability Retirement.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Claims: The chasm between illness and time

Illness creates the need for time and forces time to stand still for treatment, recuperation, attending, and resting.  Time is the commodity we no longer have in modernity, where the busy-ness of life’s travails just to survive forces everyone to walk about in a daze of exhaustion and thoughtless fatigue for fear of failure in this driven society.

The chasm between illness and time is that blur of life that happens so quickly that any notion of enjoying, of pausing, of that proverbial “stopping to smell the roses” is quickly dispensed with, thrown out the window along with the baby and the bathwater.  There is no chasm, no space, no time between time, and that chasm between illness and time develops only because we are forced to create it – by waiting for the doctor, waiting for the diagnosis, waiting upon the prognosis, waiting for the treatment to take effect, waiting for the medication to kick in; waiting, and allowing for the development between illness and time.

Time, according to Augustine, is the anticipation between memories held and events thought to occur based upon present circumstances beheld.  Physicists and Astronomers would differ, and would instead refer to moving objects and spatial divides that account for past memories, future movements and the sense of eternity in between.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition necessitates 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, the chasm between illness and time is better marked by anticipating what the Agency or the Postal Service will do (rather predictable, given their negative track record on how they treat employees in general), determining the future of staying put in a job where one is no longer able to perform one or more of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal position; and, based upon the medical condition itself, to weigh that against the lengthy process of getting a Federal Disability Retirement approved at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

There is a chasm between illness and time, but the best time spent is in preparing for the future, and perhaps consulting with an attorney who specializes in practicing Federal Disability Retirement law.  Just a thought to pass the time away.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Lawyer Representation for OPM Disability Claims: Life can change in a day

A wise person once quipped that, If you don’t like the weather in this area, wait a day and it’ll come around.  The greater meaning of such a kernel of wisdom, of course, is that it is a microcosm of a wider reflection concerning life itself; wait long enough – sometimes a week, a month, a year, or a few years – and circumstance have a tendency to alter the course of one’s life and therefore one’s perspective.

Life can, indeed, change in a day; one day, you are happily drifting along, believing that nothing could be better; and the next, a calamity ensues, the human experience becomes a “topsy-turvy” matter and suddenly sours upon the smiling demeanor we carried just a moment before.

Or, one may begin the day in a negative and foul mood, but something changes, alters, moderates and impacts, and we come home despite the turmoil of work and daily problems with a smile on our face, and when asked “what is wrong?” (as opposed to, “What is right?”), we smile distantly and refer to the sunshine, the weather, the flower smelled on the road home, or that Frost-like metaphor of having taken the road less traveled on the way there.

Or, perhaps it is the simple recognition that there is more to life than one’s own narrow perspective, that suddenly creates the change in the day of one’s life.

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 positional duties as assigned, the idea that life can change in a day is as real as the sun rises and is expected to rise.

The process of filing a Federal Disability Retirement application is a long, complex and bureaucratically difficult process, and often the process itself can be a defeating proposition as one awaits for a positive decision.  A denial from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management can have a devastating impact, and a second denial at the Reconsideration Stage can have a further deleterious effect.

With each decision, life can “change” in a day.

On the other hand, an approval effectuated from OPM can also have that same effect – of a change in one’s life, all in a day.  That is the ultimate goal – change, but in a “positive” sense; for, to remain static is to become an inert substance, and life, if anything, is a continuum of constant flux and change, like the weather that can never be correctly forecasted, and the life that can never be accurately predicted.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: Dickens, Salinger & Capote, Continued…

One could easily spend a lifetime on each, separately; of the first in the trilogy, he mercifully died before the advent of the industrial revolution, whence he may have witnessed even greater upheavals of economic unrest and labor turmoil; of the latter two, they were contemporaries who followed divergent paths — with Salinger left in the hermitage of his insular world of fears, paranoia and distrust of a world which had offered only experiences which validated such churning for a tortured soul, and for Capote, a premature death prompted by a life of public destruction.

Today, we embrace the sophistication of paying strangers to listen to our meanderings of troubled psyches; for the three in question, the times for acceptance of such ways remained unkind and untested.

By standards of modernity, the childhood experiences of Dickens would have caught the attention of social services and the authorities in tow to save the poor boy; but then, we likely would never have had the pleasure of knowing his miscreant characters strewn throughout the ghettos of boundless imagination.  Of Salinger, who turned more towards mysticism in order to feed the slow withering of his wanting woes, the need to flee from the cruelty of the world resulted in the greater insularity protected only by the memories of his haunting past.  Of the three, it was Capote who openly laughed at the scorn of the world, and like the Clowns and Fools in Shakespearean tragedies, we watched as a major figure committed public seppuku in a slow and agonizing fashion.

They represent, unfortunately, the manner in which most of us live; either of haunted pasts and tortured presents, or of ongoing meanderings in troubled waters.  Then, when a medical condition hits the seemingly clean and linear timeline we live and embrace, the disruption becomes magnified with an even greater exponent of sorrow.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer because of a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal positions, the need to 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 becomes part of the tragedy of human life.

A life cut short is one which failed to be fulfilled; and, similarly, a career shortened is one which failed to accomplish its stated goals.

But, sometimes, it is of comfort and substantive contribution to see that others — even major figures like like Dickens, Salinger and Capote — had to endure the torture of life’s fated despair.  For, in the end, there is little dissimilar in the human essence of all three in relationship to the rest of us; each suffered, lived a life of fated misery, and had to “deal” with the cruelty of the world, thereby validating Hobbes’ description that man’s life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short…”

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Federal Disability Retirement: The Structural Problem

It is what we never want to hear, and fear most:  that statement from an “expert” who informs us that it is a “structural problem“.  Not cosmetic; not superficial; not unessential; but that word, concept and image which goes to the very heart and foundation of the damage:  the center of the universe.  When the damage occurs there, and the rotting vein of progressive deterioration touches upon that central nervous system, then it becomes “structural”, and all of the rest may come falling down in a sudden dustheap of crumpled carcasses.

So long as it involves only the peripheral concerns, we keep telling ourselves that it doesn’t matter, that the foundation is still solid and they are mere extremities of lesser concern.  We do that with pain and other irritants of life.  And with medical conditions that don’t double us over or completely debilitate us.  So long as there remains a semblance of structural integrity left, one can go on and continue without regard to the symptoms which become telltale signs of impending doom.

For the Federal employee and the U.S. Postal worker who has arrived at the point of finality where one can no longer just venture forward, filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management becomes the best remaining option.

We wait because it is in the very nature and essence of procrastination that the inevitability of ignorance, neglect, disregard and sidestepping can delay the confrontation with that which we fear to know, refuse to acknowledge, and take comfort in detracting from the encounter with the truth of established verifiability.  As with science, the flat earth, and the view from a geocentric universe, no one wants to be told that there is a structural problem.

Too often, the Federal and Postal employee who finally comes to a point of needing to admit that preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether one is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is and has become a necessity because he or she has worked until the last straw was placed on the back of the proverbial camel.

Medical conditions announce harbingers of events to come, by symptoms calling for attention and attentiveness.  While the news from the architect that the problem is a “structural” one may not be welcome, it was always an indicator that the inevitable was on the fast-track of necessity and predictability; we just turned our heads aside in hopes of another day.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire