OPM Medical Retirement Under the FERS System: Mistakes

We all make them.  Some, because of complicated issues, can never admit to them.  Perhaps you were shamed at one time in making them, and will do everything to cover up any mistakes, hide them, act as if you never made any, or otherwise avoid any indicia of being less than perfect.  Perfection as a self-image is never a healthy state of affairs; for, to err is to be human, and we are never anything less than the graven images we create for the mantle of worshipping.

Some mistakes, of course, are harmless and without any consequences; others, of greater impact, whether limited to the one having made them, or beyond to third parties; and still others, of an irreversible, permanent stain.

Admissions often need to be clothed with euphemisms: “Oh, it was a youthful indiscretion” (What? Even though the mistake was made while he was 40-some years old?); “It was not on purpose”; “It was a momentary lapse of judgment”; etc.  Then, there is the haunting shadow of an overbearing parent who never softened the blow: Instead of, “It’s okay; everyone makes mistakes every now and again”, but of — silence, heavy with judging eyes.  How we handled such responses from an early age heavily influences our ability to admit to them later on.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are seeking to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management under FERS, because of a medical condition which prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the basic elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, it is important to keep the mistakes at a minimum, for the mistake which leads to a denial from OPM of a Federal Disability Retirement application can be one mistake too far, like the bridge which needn’t have been fought over.

While most mistakes are correctible, the one mistake which cannot be amended is to put blinders on OPM once they have seen something.  Like a Lockjaw who will never let it go, the clamp of OPM upon a mistake revealed is one which is difficult to pry loose.  To prevent this, contact a Federal/Postal Lawyer who is experienced in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and thus minimize the mistakes from the outset through competent and effective legal representation.

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.

 

FERS Disability Retirement: Masking the Inadequacies

Perhaps it is because everyone else is so busy with their own lives that they hardly notice; and as we pass each other by, you can tell by the perfunctory, “How’s it going?” followed by the quick exit with nary a pause to listen to an answer.

Masking inadequacies can barely require even a minimum effort; no one cares — though we do not like to acknowledge this — and even fewer would blink an eye if their lack of empathy were pointed out.  But at some point, perhaps it would become too evident, and suddenly it’s as if there was an “enemy’s list” that someone scrawled your name onto.

Is Nixon still around?  With swiftness of deliberation, you are suddenly failing to produce, you are quickly placed on a “Performance Improvement Plan” and, there you go: A Proposal to Remove and a Decision to Remove.  Of course, it wasn’t because you hadn’t adequately masked your inadequacies because of your medical conditions; rather, someone decided to target you.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents you from performing one or more of the essential elements of your Federal or Postal job, it is rarely a matter of masking the inadequacies — for, that is quite simple — but rather, that you may become the target of someone’s ire.

Contact an disability attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement, and begin the process of effectively preparing, formulating and filing for Federal or Postal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS.

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 Medical Disability Retirement: Self-Consciousness

It is a state of heightened awareness of one’s self.  At what point does an individual first experience such an encounter?

For, the newborn, the toddler, the young lad — it is through the encounters with the objective world, fully conscious, certainly, but unaware yet of the reversal and looping back into one’s own being.  Some would posit that the state of self-awareness cannot occur until there first exists a “self” of some sort to begin with.  Thus, a newborn cannot be self-conscious because there is not enough of the “stuff” of one’s self in order to be aware.

Thoughts, beliefs, memories, a history of having been — these, and much more, in their aggregate and totality, comprise the molding and making of a “self”, and awareness of one’s self — of self-consciousness — can occur only when enough of the self has been developed in order to realize the very existence of one’s self within a universe of many others.

In the end, self-consciousness is merely a state of heightened awareness of another being existing within a world of multiple beings, who happens to be one’s self.  Too much of such self-awareness — a preoccupation, as it were, or an obsession to the exclusion of the needed encounter outside of one’s self — can become unhealthy.

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, becoming self-conscious as to one’s medical condition and the state of existence in relation to one’s career and Federal Agency or Postal unit is a natural phenomena — precisely because of the impact of one’s medical condition upon one’s self.

Yet, such preoccupation must ultimately be translated back to a direct engagement with the world, by preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS.

Contact an OPM Disability Lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and begin the process of looping back away from self-consciousness, and engagement with the world around.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

Federal & Postal Employee Medical Retirement: The Mistake Unrecognized

We can always quibble about what constitutes a “mistake” — but, generally, there are circumstances described which fall into the center of the conceptual definition, those which border on the periphery, and then the remainder which, while having a consensus that they stray outside of the boundaries, nevertheless are often described as a “mistake”, but only in a retrospective manner.

Examples: A man is driving down a road and makes a left turn instead of a right.  He thought he knew where he was going, but clearly did not.  He made a mistake.  A clerk in an ice cream store thought the customer said, “Give me a scoop of Godzilla Ice Cream” — a specialty of the shop comprised of chocolate and large fudge bits. Instead, the customer had said, “Give me a scoop of Vanilla Ice Cream.”  In the din of the noisiness, the clerk misheard and made a mistake.

An individual purchases some stolen items from a street vendor.  She suspects that they are stolen, but because of the extraordinary price for which the items are aggregately offered, represses such thoughts and agrees to the purchase.  Later, the police raid the woman’s home and confiscate the property.  Was it a “mistake”?  In what way?

Here are several: It was a mistake to repress the suspicions aroused; it was a mistake to purchase such items from a street vendor; it was a mistake to fail to connect the dots of illogic; but had the person never been caught, and the value of the items later increased a hundredfold and was legitimately sold at Sothebys for an eye-opening profit, would the transaction be characterized as a “mistake”?

And finally: A similar transactional relationship; but let’s change the hypothetical somewhat.  In the new scenario, the person about to engage in the transaction asks for advice before concluding the deal.  Everyone tells him, “Don’t do it.  It is clearly fenced goods.”  A friend — a retired police officer — gives the following advice: “You know it’s gotta be stolen. You can be arrested for participating in receiving of stolen goods.  Don’t do it.” Multiple family members say t he same thing.  The person goes ahead and attempts to close the deal and, in the process, the police raid the establishment, charge the individual and place him in jail.  Was it a “mistake”?

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 — don’t make the mistake of unrecognized scenarios.

Contact a FERS Disability Lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and avoid those “mistakes” which are clearly there and which can — and will — defeat a Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

Medical Retirement under FERS & CSRS: Cherishing moments

In the end, isn’t that all that we have?  We like to speak in terms of vast, grandiose expanses of time, where we create plans that span a lifetime, or refer to wide swaths of historical periods as if we have any conception at all about time, segments of memories or even of the memories already forgotten.  Old men and women reflect back and regret the time lost; middle-aged people who are caught up in the race to make up for lost time, continue on the treadmill that never seems to lessen; and the young — they just race through it as if there is no tomorrow.

Cherishing moments — how does one do that in a fast-paced world of technological amplification where everything moves at a hare’s pace when the yearning is for the tortoise’s calm?  Life comes at us with a fury and an unrelenting torrent of rain and winds; and when we try and raise the umbrella or walk at an angle to counter the ferociousness, we merely get left behind.

How is it that “memories” become more significant and important in our lives than the actual “living” of an episodic slice of our daily existential encounters?  At what point does one take precedence over the other?  Is there an imbalance of disproportionality that occurs — as in, spending more time “remembering” as opposed to “living”?  Is a person who watches the same move over and over, day after day, any different from the one who constantly daydreams about a moment in his or her life, over and over again, repetitively in a lost morass of memories unrepentantly consumed? What is the proper balance and mixture — somewhat like a recipe for a homemade pie or a birthday cake — between the ingredient of cherishing moments and the reality of daily living?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition begins to prevent the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the problem with cherishing moments — any moments — is that the impediment of the medical condition itself will not allow for any enjoyment at all, whether of memories remembered or of life to be lived.  That is when you know that there is a disequilibrium that needs to be corrected.

Preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, may be the first, albeit tentative step, towards attaining a level of normalcy where cherishing moments is a choice to be taken, and not as a regretful nightmare uncontrollable in the restless dreams of a forsaken career.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: The Venting Venue

It is a necessary doorway (or so we are told) in order to attain sound psychological health; that, within the raging furnace of subsumed consciousness, of passions suppressed and grievances left unstated but yet seething beneath the subterranean caverns of unspecified aggregations of cumulative powder kegs confined by bloated egos, there remains a need for the fissure to emit the toxicities of life.  Or not.

The content of such emissions, of course, can never be challenged; it is only the context which should be questioned, in this age where subjectivity rules, the personal pronoun delegates, and the sacrosanct opinion of the “I” overcomes any Aristotelian residue of logical argumentation.  Venting is healthy (or so they say), and therapeutic, to boot.  And that which is both therapeutic and good, must by self-definition be unquestioned by any moral compass of historical certitude basked in tradition.

Thus, diatribes against parents are open game; vitriol against mothers, step-mothers, and especially mother in-laws are quite fashionable, and validated if spiced with an acerbic wit which only the unwitting can discern; and, certainly, the general population of parents, bad parents or parents who dared to restrict, set limits or otherwise constrained the alleged creativity of choice, lifestyle optioning and declarative innuendos of rejecting tradition and historicity of values, must be publicly flogged until the defamation of insensitivity is squeezed out of each, and where only the silence of conformity prevails, so that all traditions are banished into the timeless trashheaps of lost civilizations.

Perhaps it is good to vent; but when the “how”, the “where”, and the content-consciousness of “what” is left unconstrained, the issue is no longer whether, but if wisdom should properly channel it.  A stream flowing in front of a house, quietly lapping over the gentle smoothness of moss-covered rocks, may paint the picture of a serenity wrapped in the quietude of a morning mist; but when such waters turn into a raging turbulance and rise to levels which engulfs the rural solitude of a farmer’s self-sufficiency, the stream is then no longer the lifeline of gaiety and childhood warmth of memories unsheathed, but a warning that even the dreams of a butterfly can turn like a viper with fangs previously unseen.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who 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, the proper preparation of an effective OPM Disability Retirement application should never be used as the venting venue for one’s solace or therapeutic health.  That should be left for another day, a different doorway, and a separate pathway for healthy living.

It is, indeed, the things stated in that moment of anger, actions embraced in a fit of rage, or hurts flung as self-defeating propositions, which one comes to regret.  The Federal Disability Retirement application, by contrast, must be objective, thoughtful, forceful in its argumentation and legal methodology of analysis and evaluative content, and never to be deemed impotent as a result of a venting venue of unnecessary contextual lapses.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Explicit versus Implicit

The former leaves no room for confusion or doubt; the latter, a bit of “wiggle room” where insinuations, hints and suggestive openings are characteristic invitations of open regards.  They are not mutually exclusive within a paragraph or even a sentence; they are, however, antonyms, and should be used with context-defined relevance.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are 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, the choice of either can determine the future viability of one’s Federal Disability Retirement application.

Certainly, there are times in life when one chooses the latter methodology, for various reasons — perhaps being forthright and blunt is not the “right” approach; perhaps there is fear of offending, or mere laziness and sludge of confrontation prevents one from being straightforward.  In the legal arena, the former approach is preferable, if only to squeeze out the light of linguistic malleability and flexibility in supercilious argumentation.  But in the context of an OPM Disability Retirement packet, there will often contain multiple usages.

One’s Supervisor, in completing SF 3112B (Supervisor’s Statement), may present contradictory information by checking a box which is relatively unequivocal (is that an oxymoron — to use the terms “relatively” and “unequivocal” in the same breadth of a sentence?) but placing remarks implying the exact opposite in response to “explanatory” and more expansive questions.  Or, for the Federal Disability Retirement applicant, in completing SF 3112A, the “Applicant’s Statement of Disability”, there may be a strategy in mixing both explicit statements and providing for implicit openings for meanings and connections.

Certainly, the “law” of Federal Disability Retirement allows for it; but one must always take care in addressing the nature, extent and susceptibility of statutory interpretation in formulating one’s Federal Disability Retirement application.  Ultimately, as in most things in life, the former is preferable to the latter; though, wiggle room and the dictates social conventions may sometimes require one to be explicitly implicit in order to be inefficiently efficacious.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Medical Retirement: The Other Side of Darkness

Darkness can take many forms; of the physical omission of light, the loss of visual capacity, or the mood of a person within the context of modernity, complexity and loss of moral intransigence.  Light provides the energy of life, and when that core vibrancy is sapped and depleted by either or all of the sources of light, then darkness prevails.  Once extinguished, the last remaining flicker persists only through sheer self-determination, a plan for future reigniting, or the delicate cherishing of a hope still unforeseen.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition endangers the ability and capacity to continue with one’s chosen career or field of opportunities with the Federal Government or the U.S. Postal Service, the daunting task of securing one’s future while simultaneously dealing with the medical condition itself is often of overwhelming proportions which floods with constancy of darkness without the hope of light or flame yet extinguished.

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 best and wisest course for the Federal or Postal employee to undertake, in order to escape to the other side of darkness.  For, to remain is to wither; to pursue is to tire; to attain is to relive and realign the priorities which once foretold of future hope, but which now must be readjusted in order to attenuate the challenges which life has brought, and for which this side of light and the other side of darkness become one and the same.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: The Trinkets We Hold Dear

If value of item determines retention of possession, then few trinkets would survive the test of economic viability; but a quick perusal of one’s home will often discover large caches of sentimental liabilities strewn throughout.  What determines value, then?  Is it the monetization of an item?  Or perhaps the psychological attachment, combined with the economic forces in capitalism of supply and demand?

Real estate values soar and plummet daily, and when one considers the “high end” fluctuations where market reductions may comprise differences in the millions, one wonders about “true value” and “false valuations” of goods and services whether small or large.  If you go through your house and begin to account for the trinkets we have amassed, is it because of the monetary value attached that we continue to retain it, or the memories and golden threads of psychological ties which bind?  Is it not often the same with other issues in one’s life — of even friendships, pets and jobs?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to prevent one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties, the question one needs to ask at the outset is:  Why are we holding onto this trinket for dear life?  Is it really worth it?  At what cost?  What are the ties that bind?

Filing for OPM Disability Retirement is always a traumatic event; for, it is a dramatic change, often within a context of caustic and hostile circumstances.  But to remain is rarely an option; to walk away with nothing is not a wise one; so, one is often left with the best alternative possible:  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.

And like the trinket which holds one bound to memories of yore unblemished in their reflective delights of past warmth, they remain so, like the pitter-patter of a soft summer day’s cloudburst, stopping only to reveal the misty haze of a childhood dream.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire