FERS Medical Retirement: Where the Stars Align

It is where an auspicious event can be attributed to the alignment of the stars, or of planetary movements and cycles which can be correlated to events beyond explanation; and so Shakespeare says,

In Sonnet 14:

Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck,
And yet methinks I have astronomy.
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or season’s quality;
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,
Or say with princes if it shall go well.

And in Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 2:

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

In modernity, except in pockets of sub-cultures which still look to the stars and planetary movements before acting upon important events in their personal lives, we are separated and distanced from such belief-systems.

The Age of Reason and Science have prevailed; but whether it has brought us a greater sum of happiness, or even of success, one can barely tell.  And whether we even bother to read the stars, or seek the proper alignments, is irrelevant, as they do so quite apart from our awareness.

Whatever fault which may be found in the alignment of stars, Federal and Postal employees who suffer from a medical condition are fully aware of 2 things: First, that a medical condition is beyond being masters of one’s fate, but that, Secondly, whether to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits is well within one’s reach, however the stars align themselves.

Some things we have mastery over; other things, not.  And whether the planets or stars are in the right alignment, you may want to contact a Federal Disability Attorney who specializes in Federal Employee Disability Retirement Law, just to enhance you chances, just in case the stars have aligned with ill-effect over 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 under FERS: When We Were Young

When we were young, we used to think that good health would last forever.  When we were young, taking risks was not such a big deal, because we really thought of ourselves as invincible beings.  When we were young, we figured that tomorrow was just a concept applicable to very old people, and that today was the only tense that mattered.  When we were young, old age, sickness, pain, being limited by the deterioration of our bodies — that was something that the “other person” experienced; not me.

When we were young, the future was always bright, the past was merely a fuzzy yesterday, and today was as promising as the North Star that twinkled upon the eternal promise of our own strengths.  When we were young, life was a limitless opportunity which never had the word “never” in it.

You get the idea.  We were all once young, and foolish in our beliefs.  Life, in the end, is a lesson of humility, and as one grows older, reality tempers the foolishness we once embraced.

For Federal employees and 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, contact a Federal Disability Retirement Lawyer and consider whether or not FERS Disability Retirement is an option for you.

Yes, when we were young, such an option was not even a consideration; but when we are older, wisdom tells us that not everything we wish for, do we get, and not every option can we “go it alone”, and sometimes having an aggressive advocate to fight for your rights — a FERS Disability Retirement Lawyer — is what being older teaches us: Of having some sense and wisdom.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement under FERS: Forgotten Lives

Is it the memory that retains importance, or the fear that erasure leads to irrelevance that motivates us to prevent forgotten lives?  Does imprint upon history — whether in a footnote or an “honorable mention” in the epitaph of an unvisited tombstone — mean so much?  Does a reference in a Wikipedia listing count as a counter to a life lived in anonymity?

Most of us accept that we will not leave behind a greater imprint upon history’s rising trash heap of honorable mentions; and, except for dinner conversations amidst family gatherings, where someone might bring up a story that begins with, “Hey, remember when Uncle X was with us, the time when…” — we are left to memories forever fading and references served only by the ivy that grows over graveyards left unattended.

How important is it to maintain a semblance of relevance in a world where the 15-second timeframe of fame and one’s forever-statement of contribution to society keeps getting shortened because of the need to move on to the next and more titillating cause of excitement?

One wonders whether a person clings to doing something merely in order to avoid erasure from existence from the memories of those engaged.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition impacts the Federal or Postal employee’s ability and capacity to continue working in the chosen field in the Federal or Postal sector of employment, the issue of making a decision to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS is often inextricably tied to the emotional upheaval of forgotten lives.

When one’s purpose and motivation for daily living is so intertwined with one’s career, work and the daily relevance of a mission yet to be accomplished, it is a difficult step to take, to recognize that one’s contribution to society may be coming to an end, resulting in forgotten lives and erasure from relevance.

But always remember that priorities must always be assigned, and the priority of one’s health comes before any fear of an honorable mention in a Wikipedia footnote, and just as there is life after a career with the Federal government, so it is also true that history is replete with the unnamed and unmentioned contributions of forgotten lives forever extinguished.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Disability Retirement for Federal Employees: Life wears

The doubling of words is always an interesting endeavor; for, almost always, the linguistic connotations erupting from such coupling is rarely limited to the combination of the two, but a plenitude that proves Aristotle’s declaration that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

For, in the concept that “life wears”, we gain an understanding of multiple ideas, depending upon the tonal emphasis one places upon accents of consonants, verbs or whether the first in the sequence, or the last: that, the turmoil and challenges of life wears upon the soul; that there are varying experiences that are presented in the course of one’s life, such that the entirety of a spectrum in a person’s mortal existence “wears” different clothing to exhibit to the world; or, even that life itself has predetermined sets of wardrobe such that in different stages of a given life, such manifestation of colorful or drab garments may be that which simply must be accepted in the karma of living out such lives; and, likely, multiple other meanings and shades of ideations that this author is not perceptive enough to reveal in their hidden connotations and implied meanings unrevealed by the dullness of one’s lack of creative energy.

Whatever meanings may be derived, it is always of value to combine isolated islands of concepts, words and linguistic paradigms in order to fathom a greater comprehension.  For, ultimately, that is the challenge of daily life.  If human beings are unique in any gifted sense, it is in the capacity and ability to bring together combinations of analogies otherwise not thought of, in order to gain a greater insight into a world which is persistently incomprehensible and obstructed by our myopic view seen through lenses of a Kantian universe inaccessible but for the structural categories we impose by postulating predetermined paradigms of impediments.

Life wears many garments; life wears, in that the constant struggles and turmoil we must bear leaves us profoundly exhausted after each battle; and the fashion show that life presents to us each day is as plentiful as the Paris runways that dawn with each new season, and yet we must somehow endure it all.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition becomes an obstacle where life wears upon the depleted energy reserved for daily struggles, preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is often another metaphor of a garment well-worn that nevertheless must be contemplated.  Perhaps the thought doesn’t wear well; or, the future contemplated is one of multiple “life wears” that you must consider; or, maybe your life wears a thought process which must incorporate the new paradigm of a Federal Disability Retirement.

Whatever the conceptual output from the combination of disparate islands of thought-processes, the plain fact is that in pursuing an OPM Disability Retirement annuity, the Federal and Postal worker must recognize that life’s challenges always wears throughout both a bed of roses as well as a crown of thorns.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: The wrong target

What if you are involved in the highest levels of competitive marksmanship – say, target shooting by a rifle, or crossbow, or bow and arrow, or even by a pistol.  You shot throughout the morning, and hit the bulls eye every time; your opponents try to keep up with you, but at each level of competition, there is a slight deviation here, a centimeter there, and systematically, the competition is “eliminated”, and you are left standing at the podium of the “winner”.

As the trophy is brought out, the Chief Judge who is about to present the awards and ceremonial crown, pauses, reflects for a moment, and declares:  “Sorry, but it turns out that you were shooting at the wrong target each time.”  They then present the accolades to the “runner up”, who was shooting on the same range, aiming at each turn at the target set up in his or her respective lane of sightings, and seemed to follow the protocol as set up by the competition and the committee of judges.

You go and question the judgment of the judges, and especially address the Chief Judge, protesting:  “What do you mean?  I shot at the target that was set up.”  “But you shot at the wrong target.  Your target was the one in the lane next to you.  You shot in Lane A; you were supposed to be in Lane B”.  And you argue:  “But that is irrelevant.  Lane A is the same as Lane B, and there is no difference between the two.”  And the Chief Judge says:  “Look at your designated Card Assignment:  It states without question, ‘Assigned to Lane A’.  Yet, you shot all targets in Lane B”.  You persist in arguing:  “But what difference does it make?  It is the same target whether I am in Lane A or Lane B?”  And the kicker from the Chief Judge:  “In life, you can’t just do what you want; you have to obey the rules.”

Who is right?  Would it matter which lane one is assigned to, and whether obedience to the protocol and adherence to the “letter of the law” is followed, when the substantive point of the whole process – hitting the target – is clearly accomplished beyond the competence of all others?  We often encounter that anomaly in life – of the seeming conflict between the technicality of the issue (the “minutiae” otherwise unnoticed by the rest of the population) and the general adherence based upon common knowledge and boredom of repetitive protocol.  It may well be a trite redundancy, but when a “technicality” is involved, then a technician is the one to call.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are considering filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the question of the “wrong target” and the “technical violation” of the rules is appropriate to recognize and consider:  For, in Federal Disability Retirement Law, as in many other facets of legal wrangling, making sure that the larger compass of hitting the “right” target, as well as keeping within the proper lane of technical legal issues, are both equally important in preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

The “wrong target” is the agency; the “right target” is the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.  The “technicalities” encompass the statutes, laws, regulations and legal opinions as rendered by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board and the Federal Circuit Courts on issues pertaining to Federal Disability Laws litigated as precedents.  And, who is the proper “technician” to call?  An attorney who is experienced in fighting the cause for Federal and Postal employees, to obtain Federal Disability Retirement benefits.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Private hells

It is a familiar refrain to note that everyone has a self-contained “private hell”; and an even greater understanding that it is well that such thoughts of other hells are both private, and for the most part, left silent without conveyance or communication.  But that is changing, in large part, because people believe that mass dissemination of information has now unleashed any unspoken decorum of dignified discretion.

We believe, now, that everyone should “tell all”; that private matters once left as remnants of shameful self-confessions should be publicized because it is healthy for the inner soul to be uncovered.  But if that were really true, wouldn’t utopia have descended upon the Western World by now?

Revolutionary experimentation is often a good thing – at least, in limited dosages of consumable quantities with tolerable levels of tenacity.  But the mass acceleration of unlimited informational discharges, as evidenced by the Internet, Smartphone usage and widespread hacking and release of information of such great quantities that we cannot even begin to sift through the volume, has resulted in less, than more.  Is it because of the consumer age of technological advancement in which we all presume that “more” equates to “better”?

Once upon a time, in the quietude of an asceticism viewed with reflective consternation, the serious young individual considered shame, hesitation and discretion of public pronouncement; now, however, we have lost faith, abandoned decorum, and relinquished sovereignty, such that we have sold our souls for a mere pittance in return.

We can “tell all” so that expiation of sins once reserved for Dante’s circle of hell could be replaced with and substituted for a therapeutic society which never quite treats effective, rarely cures and always costs.  The cost of what we have given up never returns that which we have invested, and what was once sacrosanct is now mere fodder for comedians and irreverence for late night chatter and laughter of the belly-aching kind.

Somehow, private hells no longer exist; instead, they end up being confessed on a daytime show by a host who is deemed to be a doctor, but of what kind, we are never told.  Private hells imply two consonants of behavioral conflicts:  of a secret and limited access of information (privacy) combined with a torment unimagined and unfelt by others (hell).  Does the former (privacy) exacerbate the latter (hell), such that there is therapeutic value in publicizing that which is private, which would then allow for hell to become transformed into heaven?

We tend to believe so, and this generation of modernity has begun the journey down that path without any empirical evidence to support its belief-system.  Whether it will work, or not, time will tell.  For the time being, however, the private hells which consume the islands of individuals will result in the devastation of souls and psyches, as it has throughout the history of mankind.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who endure through such private hells, suffering from a medical condition only exponentially creates a greater hell than the earthly one which most people already experience.  Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is a means to an end.

The means is the administrative process of preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application.  The “ends” will come about in order to escape that private hell, which is the slice of heavenly gratuity we are given with the birth of an unasked-for life, impeded by uncalled-for harassment, by unapproachable supervisors and managers unabashedly unconscious of the private hells they themselves have created.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: Of empty promises

What is a promise? Is it binding, and if so, what makes it binding?  Does a written acknowledgment, a memorandum of understand or a memorialization of promises made and assurances conveyed, make a bit of difference?  Why are “eternal” promises so much easier to violate – is it because, as finite human beings, “everyone knows” anyway that we never meant to keep such stipulations made before gods, angels and other sanctified entities?

What about empty promises – those that we know are suspect to begin with, but in a drunken state of euphoria, deliver them with purportedly serious aplomb and regurgitate without hesitation before ceremony and sanctimony coalesce to delightful sounds of quietude where the backside covers the crossed fingers in a crucifix of humor and denial?  Disdain originates from a plenitude of broken promises; and the incremental unease which develops into the angst of quiet fury, directed with a despair permeated upon decay of conscience.

In a time before, when a person’s word needed not a written memorialization; when a handshake solidified unspoken words with a mere nod; and when language stood stalwart against the disputatious sophistry of linguistic gymnasts; by contrast, today we have a population of experienced betrayals, where everyone mistrusts and no one accepts at face value.  Is this merely a reflection of wisdom matured, or of cynicism run amok?  What do we teach our children – to trust selectively, to never accept the words as spoken, or to remain as innocent lambs on the road to the slaughterhouse?

We of this generation know of empty promises and broken dreams, and the sad part of it is, such dismay is based in reality.  Of Prozac, anxiety and childhood despair, there is no replacement of virtue in doing what “feels good” or changing mates as often as we do our underwear.  But, then, we cannot be too judgmental, these days, lest we offend our counterparts and crack the mirror which reflects our own hypocrisy.

And what of Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers?  They have also felt the brunt of empty promises.  This was supposed to be the dawn of a new age, where workers would be treated with respect and dignity, and when a medical condition or a disability intervened, the Federal agency or U.S. Postal Service would “accommodate” the medical condition.  But old habits die hard, and one must always be suspicious that there is a genetic code of ingrained darkness in the core of humanity.

Thus, fortunately, we still have laws which protect against such empty promises – like those pesky laws governing Federal Disability Retirement benefits, protecting Federal and Postal workers from simply terminating a Federal or Postal worker who suddenly cannot perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, because of the onset of a medical condition.  Preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is one way of ensuring that empty promises made, and left unfulfilled, may yet be salvaged by filing an effective OPM Disability Retirement application.

Just a thought, though empty it may well be, like promises left in the silence of a singularly occupied room, uttered to no one in particular, and heard by everyone in muted valleys of numbed acquiescence.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Conversation of one

Are we the only species which engages in it?  Do we ever see a dog standing aside and participating in such a phenomena?  Or a cardinal pausing in its morning melody of exuberant sing-song in order to address a non-existent other?  And, it isn’t even an artifice or convention for which the actor is being paid, as in an “aside” or a “soliloquy” where private thoughts are spoken aloud for the benefit of the audience, but where others in the drama act “as if” such thoughts are unspoken and shared not.

But we engage in such dialogues of diatribes:  with friends whom we practice in order to share; of spouses concerning the most intimate of matters; of bosses and coworkers to whom we failed to respond at the crucial moment, but now vent by a conversation of one of that which we wished we had said, desired to rebut, and cared to ponder.

The proverbial quip, of course, is that we are “okay” so long as we have such unilateral dialogues; it is only if the imaginary “other” begins to respond, that we then must consider the state of our own sanity.  But such colloquies occur daily, and throughout life; in quiet moments of reflective self-searching; of what we “would” have said, could have uttered, and in retrospective fashion, desired to have conveyed.

The conversation of one is often never shared; once exhaustively vented, it withers away like the ashes from a once-roaring bonfire, consuming all of the human detritus piled in anger, disgust and resentful remorse, then with watchful eyes applauded as the engulfing flames consume the aggregation of the collective angers, hurts and inflicted bruises of a shattered inner self.  It is sometimes the tool in preparation for a necessary confab; or an exchange with a worthy opponent; and where ad libbing without proper preparation is acknowledged to result in likely disaster.

The conversation of one — we have all had them; with parents and siblings; of sons and fathers; and for cardinals who chirp in the morning glory of a dew-filled mist in the obscured world of linguistic artifices constructed upon vacuity of purpose, it is the beauty of a filled universe without the complexities of human drama unfolding, that makes for worth and value.

For the Federal employee and U.S. Postal worker who suffers from a medical condition, however, the need to have that conversation of one is often a prerequisite precisely because medical conditions comprise the most private of concerns, and absolute confidentiality must be adhered to and the strictest of trust kept.

Attorneys have an inviolable rule for trust, confidence and confidentiality, and privacy concerns should never be a question.  At some point, that conversation of one needs to be expanded to include an exchange involving proper medical documentation, the statutory criteria, the legal strategy to pursue, and the content and context of what must be included in order to prepare, formulate and file for an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application through OPM, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, will often begin with a conversation of one, and that is understandable; but if it remains a mere soliloquy, as in a Shakespearean play where each in an audience believes that he or she is the sole soul who heard it, then it will remain merely as the unconquered thoughts of countless past warriors who gave up lives for a cause left in futility, and where the present is never confronted, and the future left unsecured.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement from Federal & Postal Employment: The Scraps of Life

But that primary utility and first considerations were always so; if we were inanimate objects able to compete, we would raise our hands and volunteer for the front of the line just to be recognized and implemented.  We whine and complain that the dignity and the essence of each soul should be treated not merely as an end, but a means, and thereby treated with respect and empathy.  But of our actions; how we respond; what we are willing to surrender in order to be used as mere fodder for the foul play of fantasies left as scrap heaps of history?  Are we useful?  Of what good are we?  Do we make a difference?

Such questions become the mindful focus of determining the worth of our being.  Perhaps it is the ingrained determinism of the hunter of yore; that the pursuit of the prey in that pool of genetic yonder era when Darwinian structures compelled the need for vainglory conquests; but in the age of quietude of purpose, where civilizations have settled in cultivated corners of sophisticated inaneness, the need to be recognized and judged as useful still follows upon the self-awareness of one’s relevance in life.

The scraps of life — do we see ourselves as such; like the leftovers unappetizingly shoved aside on a plateful of greasy refuse not even considered by poverty or despair?  How does it “feel” to be forgotten in the dungeons of abandoned corners, left as irrelevant and useless remnants in a society which declares worth and value by the monetary assignation on a gold standard no longer applied?

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 to perform all of the essential elements of one’s positional duties — they know well the feeling of what is meant by “the scraps of life”.  For, the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker who no longer can show the fullness of productivity, prove the worth of fulfilling the “Agency’s Mission” or meet the daily quota of processing the voluminous mountains of mail — it is, indeed, the treatment of the human being as merely an end, and not as the means for a society unconcerned with dignity or respect.

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, is often the only option left, in order to be allowed to “move forward” with life.  For, in the end, it is the next phase of life, the chapter following, and the “new and improved” menu for the visiting dignitary and wide-eyed tourist, that matters most.

And for the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker who must cast aside the plate of delectable gastronomics now left as the scraps of life?  Preparing, formulating and filing an effective OPM Disability Retirement application — that is the way off of the plate, and into the furnace of a future uncertain, but surely of greater relevance than to be suddenly lifted and placed beneath the table for the waiting pack of dogs to devour.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement under FERS or CSRS: The carefully crafted life

But that we could just write the narrative of our life, reflecting briefly upon our past, describing the present condition of being, but most importantly, to carefully craft the anticipated future of our lives in process.  What is revealed from one’s past is telling of a person’s character; of the present, a manifestation of the compass of one’s heart; and to the narrative of one’s future?  If the cultivation of one’s soul is the essence of the teleological process of life, the content of what we insert into the delineated poetry of future actions will uncover the truth in being of our damaged and tortured souls.

Would the script include fame and fortune?  Encounters with the common and ordinary, or of the arrogant dismissal of all but the beautiful and fortunate?  Would money always be written into the narrative of a future life, or ignored and instead replaced by peculiarities of fantasies, such as time travel, the ability to fly, or defiance of mortality and vanquishing of fear?

What one wishes for, like the genie who grants the dreams of youth, casts aside the veil we walk about with, and reveals all.  But the operative concept often overlooked is not about a crafted life; rather, that “extra” descriptive adverb which denotes painstaking caution and conscientious execution:  How does one “carefully” craft a life?  For, when wishes are offered and granted without constraint, the crafting itself becomes cast away as a mere byproduct and of irrelevant concern, like the human detritus flung out from a window of a speeding car down the highway of reckless disregard.

The care that one takes in crafting a life — now, that is an undertaking few of us attend to, despite every opportunity at every turn in the linear sequence of even the ordinary life of an individual.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers, of course, 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 the Federal or Postal employee’s positional duties, that opportunity is offered in a limited and defined manner — in the form of 2 pathways.

First, by being required to write one’s narrative on SF 3112A, Applicant’s Statement of Disability (where the Federal or Postal employee must describe, delineate and prove a sliced portion of one’s life concerning the medical condition and its impact upon one’s capacity and ability to perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job); and Second, by preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application and submitting it through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset — thereby formulating the narrative which will determine the future course of one’s life and livelihood.

No, in either case, the Federal or Postal employee will not be able to receive a genie’s grant of unfettered wishes and requests; but that was always the thoughtless residue of a childhood fantasy, anyway.

For, in the end, the carefully crafted life is not one which has any room for the misspent daydreams of a forlorn childhood; rather, the truly substantive content of a carefully crafted life necessarily involves the Triumvirate of the T:  Trials, Triumphs, and some sprinkling of Tragedies; just refer back to Shakespeare, or of Milton and Melville; anything else was merely the storybook fairytales of a bygone memory left behind in the dustbin of a forgotten era.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire