Federal Disability Retirement Law: Loss of Social Cues

Perhaps, no one will notice.  Or, more likely, there will be a continuum of embarrassing moments, where everyone will merely look the other way and act as if nothing out of the ordinary has occurred.  Truth be told, the loss of social cues has, over time, become palpable; beyond noticeable; more than a sidebar; it is now at a crisis point where normalcy has given way to eccentricity of behavior.

Look at all of the kids entering the school building; surrounded by others, yet lost with heads bent down to take a last look at their smartphones.  Watch as school ends, and what are they all doing — exiting and at the first inkling, the initial inclination?  Out with the smartphones.  Screens are merely paginated snapshots of information; they do not present the human complexities of expressions, grimaces, winces or smiles — all of the compendium of social cues which are picked up in the animal world through real encounters with others.

They are learned over time; imperceptibly; of recognizing tension in the air, of silence so heavy that it feels stuffy.

How do we learn to pick up social cues?  By engaging with other human beings, caring about them, showing some interest and empathy.  Instead, we choose to stare at screens filled with flashing lights; and though the dopamine in our bodies may accelerate and give us an addictive “high”, the loss of social cues is what disintegrates the already-weakened fabric of a clueless society.

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, have you picked up on the social cues of your supervisor or coworkers?  Do they look at you as if you carry the Black Plague?  Are you all of a sudden disinvited from closed-door meetings?

Having a medical condition, trying to hide it, attempting to push through despite your deteriorating health; these are all part and parcel of indicators that a change is needed, and you may want to initiate the change before your agency begins the process of separating you from Federal Service.  Contact a FERS Disability lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and don’t let the social cues unrecognized lead you to a surprise proposal to remove you from Federal Service.

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 Benefits: Easing the Complex Process

Every Federal Disability Retirement is a “first” for every filer; or, even if it is the rare case of a person who attempted the process some years ago, was denied, and is attempting again to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS — even for that person, it will appear as if it is the “first time”.

The first time for anything is almost true of everything.  This is not like riding a bicycle, or driving a car, or coming home after work; you can’t gain any greater experience by “trying it out” a few times and then going for it as some “final phase”.

Instead, filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS is to engage and subject yourself to a complex administrative process which has multiple tentacles of responsibilities, all of which must be coordinated into a single application which effectively persuades an always-unwilling Federal Agency (i.e., the U.S. Office of Personnel Management) to grant a benefit which will effectively pay you a lifetime annuity/pension.

Easing the complex process is the job of an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law.  For the experienced Federal Disability Retirement Lawyer, it is not the “first” time, nor the tenth — yet, there is a recognition that each case is unique no matter what place in the sequence of cases he has represented.

Contact a lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and ease the complex process of preparing, formulating and filing an effective case.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

Attorney Representation for OPM Disability Claims: Shedding

It is nature’s way of getting rid of the old and replacing it with the new.  Sometimes, however, nature is slow in its processes and the environment surrounding doesn’t quite keep pace with the steady progress of unresponsive mechanisms — as in the horse’s winter coat that remains for weeks despite the sudden heat wave that overtakes the region.

There is the shedding brush that is often used for dogs and horses; the circular metal implement hastens the stubborn fur and hairs that remain despite the blazing heat wave that comes suddenly upon us; but perhaps nature is more attuned towards experiences in the vicissitudes of weather, waiting patiently, biding its time with a knowing smile that wintry days of the residue of cold and cool temperatures may yet follow upon a week of unseasonably warm temperatures, and maybe that’s why the unshed fur and follicles that remain are still clinging yet in order to make sure that summer is the real summer to stay, as opposed to those Indian summer days that wax and wane.

We are impatient in our response to the environment.  We want to rush ahead despite all of the warnings and signals that Nature lays before us — and so the stubborn clumps of winter coats cling desperately against the shedding brush that shears too soon.  It is our way of subverting nature regardless of what Nature is trying to tell us.  That is often what a medical condition does as well — of pain signaling our pace of recovery; of anxiety foretelling that it is too soon to return to the environment of stress; of nightmares and insomnia warning by expiating foreboding images within a stress-filled condition of life.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition where the medical condition is preventing you from performing one or more of the essential elements of your Federal or Postal job, it may be time to begin shedding those factors which are contributing to your worsening health.

Perhaps the job was not the originating basis or reason for your medical condition; and, perhaps your Federal or Postal career was once a significant factor in your daily motivation to continue to strive each day.  However, when a medical condition becomes exacerbated by the very elements of the job, or there exists an inconsistency between your cognitive or physical capacity to perform all of the essential elements of the job, then it may be time to prepare, formulate and file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether you are under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

Shedding is nature’s way of adapting to a changing environment; shedding is also an artificial means of recognizing the necessity for change, and when a medical condition is no longer consistent with the positional elements of a Federal or Postal job, it is time to consider shedding the job itself in order to regain the health that is nature’s priority, as it should be for you.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement Benefits: Keeping

Keeps; keeping; kept; the endurance of retention reflects the vitality of human obstinacy.  To retain, to own, to possess; in the present tense, present simple passive, present perfect passive, past perfect passive, present modal, past modal, and a dozen other forms of grammatical conundrums.  It is the action of owning, maintaining or  possessing; often, with implications of forceful protectiveness despite demands of rightful ownership by third parties.  “He kept it!”  “He keeps coming back!”  It is the persistence, the refusal to abandon and the resistance against another’s claim, whether rightful, justified or otherwise questionable.

Then, there are forms which imply honor and integrity:  “Keeping the trust”; “Keeping the flame aglow”; “She kept her word”.  The boys “kept their promise”; He kept up appearances.  In all grammatical forms, whether of a passive nature or active tense, there is always throughout a sense of an activity of the will.  “Keeping up with the Joneses” is not merely a passive inactivity, but an affirmative movement and stratagem focused upon advancing beyond a social inertia that encompasses tentacles of thought, consideration, judgment and planning.

It is a simple word, used without much thought, never pausing in a conversation to see whether others gathered will be impressed by the perfection of such a choice – that unique word which describes an image so poignant that to have inserted it nonchalantly in a sentence without the help of a Smartphone in Googling it before uttering the inserted grandness connoting linguistic excellence is next to leaving one breathless and in disbelief.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who understand the simple concept of “to keep”, whether in the present tense, present simple passive, past perfect passive or the multitudinous other grammatical forms, there are caveats to maintain when preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, not the least of which are:  Keep your cool; have your files kept and maintained; keep persisting; recognize the importance of keeping a balanced and coherent narrative; keep the faith; insist upon keeping informed; and never keep allowing for injustice to prevail.

In keeping with tradition, always remember that preparing an effective OPM Disability Retirement application, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is a complex administrative process which must be kept in mind, and that the formulation and filing with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management requires keeping a patient, sane and insistent attitude, much like keeping a promise made despite those who have not kept their word.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

FERS & CSRS Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: The Abridged Joyce

The extraction and extinguishment is done by unnamed others, sometimes in teams of unknown quantities, and certainly of dubious qualification of insight.  In a similar vein, writers have always complained of the artistic ineptitude of editors, and editors of the quaint verbosity detracting from the plot, narrative and captivating flow missed by writers in pursuit of “Art”; but is there ever a “middle ground” when it comes to the integrity of the soul?  But how can you cut away the content of the work, when the process itself is part and parcel of the substantive construct of the whole itself?

It would be like removing the heart itself, or perhaps even the human brainstem from the spinal cord, thereby violating the vertebral contiguity and effectively separating thought from movement, material from the spiritual, and soul from the activity which defines life itself.  Can Joyce, Tolstoy or even Scott Fitzgerald be abridged?  One can imagine the journalistic brevity of Hemingway, where incisiveness of narrative is reflected in the economy of words, but even to that, isn’t the stronger argument that the great Papa’s works are already so edited to the core that any further amputation would render the body functionally illiterate?

Yet, we accept the Reader’s Digest version of works for want of time saved and the capacity to declare a reading conquered; and others would quip, but surely it is better than just reading the Cliff Notes, isn’t it?  Not sure about that; as such cottage industries serve a different purpose — of understanding the content and context of a thing, as opposed to the enjoyment of the work itself.

But if quantity of linguistic captivation is so interwoven with the rhythmic balance of the entirety and aggregate of the whole, can an abridged Joyce be justified, ever?  Or have we accepted that, as life itself can be cut short without demeaning the relevant historicity of its linear heritage, so reading the partiality of an excised edition is just as good, somewhat as acceptable, and ultimately a pragmatic decision in terms of time saved and effort expended?

As Art reflects Life, so for Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers whose careers and lives are interrupted by a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from continuing in the chosen field and career, preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management allows for the abridged Joyce of a hyphenated accentuation.  For, in the end, the quip that Life mirrors Art is a limited proverb.

The Federal or Postal employee never asked for the interruption of the medical condition, but there it is — a bump in the pathway of life itself, with very little “art” to show for it.  But the narrative of one’s Federal or Postal career must be written in the Statement of Disability with care and collection of medical evidence to back it up, and the SF 3112A, Applicant’s Statement of Disability, is nothing but an artful way of deceitful cunning by a bureaucracy which attempts to subvert and deny at every turn, and the life of such a linguistic animal must be prepared well, formulated cogently, and submitted with confidence of purpose to maneuver into the maze of bureaucratic obfuscation.

The abridged Joyce will always be offered in this world of abbreviated concerns; filing for Federal Disability Retirement, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, on the other hand, is the only option remaining for many Federal and Postal workers injured or ill during the Federal tenure of one’s life, and should be accomplished with the care of the expanded version, and not an edited parcel to be cut and sliced like so many narratives in the trashbin of society.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement Lawyer: Drawers and Other Hideaways

Whether cabinets and chests were created for neatness of housekeeping, or to bifurcate the clutter of consciousness, should be left up to anthropologists and social commentators.  Facebook, too, and Social Media, the inability to resist adding to the clatter and superficiality of what we say, what we collect, and how we amass, both information and items we choose to gather; does it all reveal the historical backdrop of the Mesozoic era, from whence we all originate?

We are all, ultimately, left to the devices of our own unmaking and insufficiencies; and that which we neatly hide in drawers of convenience, and close, become tantamount to sealing our fate when once we conceal that which needs to be maintained.

Federal Disability Retirement is a benefit which Federal and Postal workers seek to obtain, when a medical need arises and the medical condition, injury or trauma begins to impact one’s ability and capacity to perform all of the essential elements of one’s positional duties with a Federal Agency or the U.S. Postal Service.  Once obtained, the Letter of Approval received from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, often declares to the (now former) Federal or Postal employee, that a linear process from start to finish has now been concluded.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Like cars and children, maintaining the sufficiency and viability of an ongoing Federal Disability Retirement benefit is as important as the effort expended to win an approval.  And, like the car which needs a periodic oil change in order to extend the life of the internal mechanical apparatus by an exponential multiple, so the quality of effort needed to retain and maintain a Federal Disability Retirement benefit is minimal and uncomplicated; but necessary.

For Federal employees and Postal workers, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the cost of continuing care of one’s Federal Disability Retirement benefit, once achieved, should never be cast out of mind and consciousness; and rather than neatly setting it aside in some drawer or other hideaway, it should remain on full display in the centrality of one’s livelihood, lest the mice, goblins and other unwelcome creatures begin to gnaw at the ripeness of one’s Federal Disability Retirement benefit.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire