OPM Disability Law: The Fatigue of Profundity & Requirement of Repetition

Profundity is overvalued.  With the advent of the internet and information technology, the widespread dissemination of seemingly esoteric array of knowledge and know-how (yes, there is a distinction with a difference between the two), everyone is vying for the heard voice, and the break-out from the herd.  One becomes easily fatigued by seemingly deep insights, or “new” data and facts upon otherwise mundane concerns.

Repetition is considered as a trait of boredom; but the longer one lives, the more one recognizes that there is truly little new under the sun, and the apparent newness of X is merely a regurgitation of the old Y of yore.   But repetition does have its own uniqueness of value, and inherent strength of significance.  For, often, a person who turns the same corner as thousands, and tens of thousands before, may be encountering the next block for the first time, and what those before him or her did has little to no significance to the epistemologically privileged experience for that singularity of uniqueness.

Thus, for Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who experience a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to impact one’s ability and capacity to perform the essential elements of one’s job, the knowledge that many, many Federal and Postal employees before were able to file for, and get approved, Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, so long as one is under either FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the comfort of which one may partake rests in the fact that one is not alone; yet, it is not purely a “repetition” of sameness but a genus of similarity; for, as each medical condition and every circumstance reveals a uniqueness which must be dealt with individually, so each Federal Disability Retirement case must be handled with care.

At the same time, however, it is of value to recognize that repetition of relevant laws, statutes and regulations, cited in the ordinary course of preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, is necessary for success in obtaining the benefit.

From the standpoint of OPM, the fatigue of profundity comes in failing to view a particular case with “new eyes”; from the viewpoint of the Federal or Postal worker who is filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits for the first time, it is the inability to recognize the requirement of repetition which often results in an ineffectual formulation of one’s case.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: The Coming Year

Calendric rhythms constitute artificial attempts at becoming partnered with time; like the music to which the dancer dances, there is nothing uglier than being out of step with the aura of a beat.

Eternity of time marches in a continuum without notice or constraint; our bifurcated days are broken down into days, hours, minutes and fractions thereof, as ordered slices like slabs of beef prepared for delectable consumption.  But whether the artificial imposition of our subjective categories have an impact upon the rhythmic tone of a cold and impervious world, is gleaned in rare moments of sudden insights, when a tremor shakes the foundations of tranquility, and we are awakened from the slumber of our own inventions.

Medical conditions tend to do that.  Suddenly, priorities of life must be reordered, calendric impositions of tasks to be accomplished seem to pale in weight of sufficiency, and leisure activities no longer constitute a viable avenue of escape from the drudgery of daily monotony.  Medical conditions bring to the fore the importance of that which is the essence of relevance:  not possessions, not contraptions nor toys of distractions; but of human connections.

For Federal and Postal employees who put so much of their time, effort, lives and worth of energy into the performance of daily work, a medical condition that prevents one from performing the essential elements of one’s positional duties becomes a trauma of sorts, and a shifting of tectonic plates.  Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is an option one should take when once the notion of value, time, priorities and the interruption of calendric rhythms has been evaluated.

In the coming year, there will be moments of clarity and insight, when it becomes obvious that one’s body is attempting to convey a warning, or where the cognitive deluge of despair blares a clarion call for the quietude of yesteryear, when the chains of time were but a hollow echo whistling in the cavernous dark of unknown depths.  The coming year will tell when it is time to file for Federal Disability Retirement.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Postal & Federal Medical Retirement: To Shelve a Book

Even with one penny, this book would be overpriced. When your health and well-being are at stake, it’s time to write a new chapter of your life with Federal and Postal Disability Retirement

It is an act of finality; a sense of resignation pervades when a book which one treasured is placed on a shelf.  One may deceive oneself that it can always be retrieved at some future, unknown and unspecified date, but in a world where the bombardment of newness and the constancy of moving on to the “next” thing dominates, the chances are that the act of shelving will constitute the gathering of dust in corners where forgotten memories will atrophy with cobwebs of deliberative disregard.

The alternative is to keep a stack of books and allow the unsteady tower of irregular and awkward dimensions teeter on the brink of collapse; but even there, as others pile onto the freshness of that distant reading, crushing out the life of passages memorized in moments of distracted concentration, it is the act of shelving which marks a critical juncture of terminal finality.  As with things in the mind, so in the physical world, we must force ourselves to take that step, despite the knowing frailty of life in compartmentalized forms.

Filing for Federal & Postal Disability Retirement benefits has that similitude of sense to it; to initiate the process is to acknowledge the necessity of leaving behind an image, a career, a routine, a life that once was, is forever changing, and ever losing its comfort of static monotony.  For Federal employees who must file for Federal & Postal Medical Retirement benefits, whether the Federal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the act itself of initiating the administrative process is to shelve a meaningful career full of accomplishments, accolades and activities of astronomical admiration; but there comes a moment when time, space and necessity coalesce to compel, and medical conditions tend to do that.

And like the book which is shelved upon reaching the last chapter of resonance, the feeling of a whispering breeze blowing lazily across the meadows of a past life reverberate, as the quiet sound of an exiting murmur echoes in the hollows of necessity; yes, life requires the shelving of books and other things, as does life itself.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire