FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: From Whence We Came

It is often quipped that the advantage of human psychology is in our short memories; otherwise, we would walk around with greater angst than we deserve.  The accomplishments achieved; the accolades left unstated; perhaps in menial tasks or ones of recognized significance; but in any event, a career, all told, which spans a decade or more, will always have a sense of achievement, if only for the steadfastness of commitment itself.

In this day and age, where millennials change jobs as often as infants of diapers, the career of a Federal or Postal worker which spans multiple decades is an anomaly itself.  Whether the goal was to make that 30 years, or simply because the Federal or Postal employee liked what he or she was doing, matters not.  Commitment in and of itself is an achievement.  Thus, when a Federal employee’s or a U.S. Postal worker’s career is cut short because of a medical condition, such that the medical condition necessitates the 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 regrets foretold or the dismay of a career cut short, should always be replaced with memories from whence we came.

Staying with a Federal or Postal job for so many years reveals a steadfastness of purpose; but where priorities intersect and interrupt, especially when it comes to one’s health and future security, filing for OPM Medical Retirement benefits is meant to salvage such a Federal career by allowing for an annuity to stabilize one’s future, and to consider taking that experience one has amassed into the private sector for a possible second vocation.

Memories; they are funny animals; and for humans, allows for visualization and imagination from whence we came.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement Lawyer: Time Was, When…

Reminiscences represent a harbinger of the state of existence and the mental attitude of individuals; once engaged, they reveal the past-oriented focus, as opposed to the future dreams of youth.

Do young people reminisce?  At what point does one engage in such leisurely exercise?  And the spectrum of historical context, or the lack thereof — does the limited span of a past life determine the narrow course of future remembering?

It is always a danger to place too glowing and positive a light on the past; for, as present circumstances may be a pocket of discontent, so the warped perspective may, by contrast, create a fictional scenery of the past by unknowingly diminishing and extinguishing less notable events once experienced.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are subjected to the hostility of one’s own agency because of the manifested impact of a medical condition upon one’s capacity to perform the essential elements of one’s positional duties, it is natural to embrace the refrain, “In the good old days”.  Health often brings that careless attitude of flippant fortitude; it is when we have something that we unknowingly take for granted, and when it becomes diminished, or is suddenly gone, the human tendency of regret and return of rectitude begins to pervade.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is often the pathway out of the muddle of reminiscence; there is, perhaps not yet known to the Federal or Postal employee, life beyond the Federal government or the Postal Service.  If too much time is spent in the past, then the robber barons of yesteryear pervade in the present, to rob one’s future.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through OPM is not merely for escapism from a current “bad” situation; it is to secure the future such that there will be one, where one day in the twilight of a life, one can look upon the current negative circumstances and begin with the reminiscence of, “Time was, when…”

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire