Disability Retirement for Federal Workers: For What Do We Expend Our Lives?

Expenditures can be extracted in a monetary sense; but one can also expend effort, emotions and cognitive exertion, too.  We think too narrowly in terms of financial gain or loss, but in every transaction, there is a cost to be paid in terms of human extraction.

The ultimate question, then, within the context of so much busyness and activity, comes down to a fundamental issue:  For what reason?

Heidegger sought always the question of Being, and noted that most of human activity is merely an excuse to avoid the ultimate issue of our own mortality, and the question posed herein is a close cousin of such a foundational inquiry.  Is it for a momentary respite of quietude?  Is it for a flash of a manic moment?  Does happiness constitute a pause in an otherwise dreary existence?  Is it all worth it to receive a hug from one’s child, or a kind word from a stranger, or the warmth of tongue from a puppy asking for your attention?

There is poetry in life, and moments of incremental advances of worthwhile sketches;  but if one merely lives for the negation of X, then one should consider a change in direction or course.  For example, if happiness is defined by a temporary escape from pain, then one’s life is bundled up by the negation of a negative (remember one’s math days — of two negatives equalling a positive?).

For Federal and Postal employees who suffer from a medical condition, such that life has become a treadmill of daily pain and medical turmoil, and where weekends and days off are merely expended to recover from the weeks and months of physical trials, it may be time to consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether under FERS or CSRS.

For what does one live?  Surely not for the condescending feedback from a bureaucracy or agency; it must be for more than that.  Otherwise, the price paid far exceeds the benefit received. Federal Disability Retirement is an option available for all Federal and Postal employees who have at least 18 months of Federal Service.

Let not life be a question of avoiding one’s mortality; or, for that matter, to allow for life’s expenditures to exceed the value of the product purchased.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

 

Disability Retirement for Federal Government Employees: The Tenuous Thread of Life

In this, our desensitized, sanitized life; in a world of virtual reality and technological complexity, the modern man has little empathy for the tenuous thread of life.

We are conditioned and trained more to cry over a movie scene than the tragedy which befalls a real entity. A well-rehearsed scene which evokes a glandular response, perfected at the 50th take with artificial lighting and poll-tested under the directorship of professionals, will tug the sympathies of our fellow man, than the unseen damage done to the psyche of a puppy lost in a world of daily productivity.

That is the stark reality which the Federal and Postal Worker must face in seeking Federal Disability Retirement through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether under FERS or CSRS; of avoiding the land mines of adverse actions by one’s agency; of trying to contain the disdain of fellow Federal or Postal Employees who suddenly begin to shun those who are not part of “the team” and who cannot justify their existence because of lack of productivity.

It is the tenuous thread of life which becomes all the more real and revealing; for, it is ultimately not what we produce or how much; what we consume or which brand; rather, it is how we tend to the weakest and the flimsy which represents the soul of a person, a neighborhood, a community.

Federal Disability Retirement is a benefit which preserves the dignity of the Federal and Postal Worker by providing for a base annuity, and then to allow that person to go out and try a new vocation and career without penalizing that person for again becoming a productive member of society.

That tenuous thread of life; it is well worth fighting for.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Early Medical Retirement for Disabled Federal Workers: Joy of the Mundane, Though We Knew It Not

The very concepts of “joy” and “mundane”, placed within the same breath, the same sentence, creates what is tantamount to an anomaly, a self-contradiction, an oxymoron, or at the very least a questionable positing of an invalid proposition.

For we tend to consider joy in terms of momentary elation, an extended period of satisfaction, or a sense of quietude wrapped in layers of giggling quivers.  Conversely, the mundane evokes boredom, monotony, a time devoid of elevated emotional responses; a time of negation, where the chasm between desire and duty floats apart from one another like drifting icebergs in the cold North Atlantic seas.

Until a medical condition intervenes.  Until the chronicity of a progressively deteriorating and debilitating disease or injury eats away at our body, mind and/or soul.

In a crisis, the monotony of the mundane becomes preferable; and in a protracted life of chronic ailments, that momentary period of quietude when life was merely the ordinary and the boredom of everyday existence prevailed upon a life questioned as to value, purpose, character and the eternal “why?”; it is then that one comes to realize the ultimate Zen character of enlightenment, and recognizes the living distinction between joy and the mundane.

For the Federal and Postal worker who suffers daily, Federal Disability Retirement is a viable alternative to the daily divide which has grown disproportionately magnified, between joy and the mundane.

Federal Disability Retirement benefits are part of one’s bundle of employment benefits.  It is a benefit filed through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, for those under either FERS or CSRS, and allows for early medical retirement, while tending to one’s health conditions.

We all once knew the joy of the mundane; but such knowledge quickly gets erased when a medical condition creates a crisis.  Federal Disability Retirement allows the Federal and Postal employee to relive that joy — of the mundane, the monotonous, of the everyday existence of the ordinary which we all seek and desire.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Disability Retirement for Federal Workers: The Dripping Sensation

The slow, methodical tap-tap-tap of a dripping faucet; what does it portend?  Metaphors abound, and one wonders whether this new generation, attuned only to a digital age of technological quietude, as opposed to the churning smokestacks of the industrial age, can even comprehend the commonplace analogies which were once taken for granted within the community — such mundane descriptions as, “The marching of time” — for, without the mechanical ticking of the clock or watch, can one understand what one has never experienced?  But it is the dripping faucet which still remains with us — of an indicator that there is a crack, an invisible hairline imperfection, a weakening over time, and one which we all know can only progressively get worse.

It is a preface, a predication, an object-to-the-subject; it tells us that we must attend to it.

Like time and the inevitable progression of age, wrinkles, sagging eyes and the dying spirit, the sound of a dripping faucet reveals to us that the simplicity of a warning sign portends of an underlying complication which, once dismantled, may manifest the ill-winds of the future. It is like a medical condition; perhaps it began as a mere nagging sensation, one which could be ignored, or at least mentally set aside.  But then, one day the nagging sensation became just “slightly more”, and from then on it stayed with us, like a whipping dog whose loyalty cannot be shaken.

The dripping sensation — for Federal and Postal employees, it may be the first chapter in the lengthy novel which must ultimately embrace the theme of Federal Disability Retirement — an option which is viable only  because, fortunately, it is available; and in the end, that nagging sensation almost always needs tending to; and for the Federal or Postal employee who has that option of considering filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether under FERS or CSRS, while the faucet in one’s house may require the services of a plumber, at least the alternative to attain a level of recuperative periods of relief from one’s medical condition can be attained through an approval of a Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS or CSRS.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Federal Employee Medical Retirement: Existence and Being

There is a distinction between existence and being; for the former is something which merely “is”, and over which one has no control over, or the capacity of which to have any input; while the latter is the composite of the essence of who we are — the coalescence of one’s past, present, and future potentiality.

Heidegger’s life work encompassed the attempt to describe the search for being, the revelatory recognition of it, and the systematic approach to unravelling the hidden fullness of being.  It is the difference between going through the motions, and living an authentic life.

That is how Federal and Postal employees often feel just before contemplating filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether under FERS or CSRS — for the state of merely existing in order to trudge to work, in order to “get through the day”, only to return home, to sleep, to struggle, to regain one’s strength, energy and stamina for a reserve to be depleted for another day of work; such a process describes an existence, not a state of being.

That is also why scams and “get-rich-quick” schemes continue to successfully con so many — because most people consider themselves merely in a state of existence, waiting to be saved for a life of being, but mistake the conversion from the former to the latter as dependent and reliant upon more money, greater acquisition of wealth, and accumulation of property.  But it is good health and the ability to be pain-free, which forms the foundation for a true state of being.

Disability Retirement for the Federal or Postal Worker is a means of attaining a state of being where rehabilitation and escape from the treadmill of progressive deterioration is possible.  That bifurcation which Heidegger attempted to describe — between a state of mere existence, and the lifting of the veil upon Being — should be seriously considered.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Medical Retirement for Federal Workers: The Gatekeeper II

The image of the gatekeeper is a powerful one — for it represents both sides of an analogously identical coin:  of an insurmountable impasse from the perspective of a third party, as well as the key to entry and deliverance when seen from the subjective “I”.

Stress is ultimately an inevitable and inherent part of any workplace environment.

Each of us represents a gatekeeper of sorts; what we allow to bother us, and what stresses we embrace and transport into the quietude of our own homes, will often depend upon each individual’s tolerance for the wide spectrum of ability to filter the stresses impacting our lives.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management is also a gatekeeper of sorts.  The Agency empowered to make determinations on all Federal Disability Retirement applications can open the door to allowing for that crucial rehabilitative time in a person’s life, where granting of a Federal Disability Retirement application will secure one’s future and change the course of one’s life in order to avoid, avert and allow for an environment different from the stressful one which is impacting one’s health and well-being.

Ultimately, the gatekeeper him/herself — the Federal or Postal employee — must make the decision to open the door or not, and to take the next step in determining whether or not it is time to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether under FERS or CSRS.  That decision — whether to open the door or not — is often the single most important step of one’s life, career, and future course of actions.

In the end, we determine who we are, what we want in life, and when the right time is, in overcoming the insurmountable; for the gatekeeper has the hidden key to the passageway to the Khyber Pass of our own future.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Federal Worker Disability Retirement: Heidegger, Being, Essence and Value

Heidegger represents a culmination of sorts — of a philosopher caught in the historicity of his own time and making (with allegations of collaborating with the Nazi party), while proposing a methodology of modern philosophy which embraces the issues important to modernity — essence, value, and the meaning of one’s existence.

In this society of technological adaptation, where the separation of humanity from machines, and the chasm of isolation which expands exponentially, resulting in greater incidents of psychiatric desolation; it is important to pause and reflect upon the value of the human being.

For the Federal or Postal employee who has worked tirelessly to “advance the mission of the agency”, but who now finds him/herself with a medical condition which prevents him/her from performing all of the essential elements of one’s job — how does the agency act/react?  Does it manifest compassion, empathy, and most importantly — loyalty?

In order for the conceptual paradigm of “loyalty” to have any meaning, it must be bilateral — meaning, inclusive in both directions.  But too often, loyalty is based merely on “what has he/she done for the agency today?”  The meaning of one’s existence is too closely tied to one’s work; the value of human worth is too easily discarded when one’s work is disrupted; and the truth of one’s being is too readily revealed when a medical condition intersects and interrupts one’s ability/inability to perform one’s job.

Heidegger, in the end, was probably right; the “things” we do are mere distractions to the ultimate fate of our being; but in the meantime, we must continue to strive, to live.

Federal Disability Retirement is a benefit which exists in order to continue to live.  It allows for a Federal or Postal worker to continue in another vocation, and to have that rehabilitative period to focus upon the important things in life:  of health, of value, and of family relationships.  Don’t tie yourself too closely to some faceless agency’s “mission”; the first and primary mission is the worth of the individual human being.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Medical Retirement for Federal Workers: The Easter Paradigm

Paradigms which are based upon traditional, historical or religious foundations which have had their efficacy tested by time, have a clear advantage over untested social engineering experiments.

Federal Disability Retirement, whether under FERS or CSRS, from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is a paradigm of recognizing the worth of human productivity, by allowing for payment of an annuity because of a medical condition which prevents one from performing one or more of the essential elements of a particular job; yet, concurrently, allowing for productivity in working at another job, if desired, and if capable.

Thus, the normal reaction for the public at large is often, “Why should you get anything if you can work at some other job?”  The answer is the recognition of the Easter Paradigm:  death and resurrection are not mutually exclusive concepts; similarly, the fact that one is “disabled” does not mean that one cannot continue to contribute within the context of the workforce, but in a different kind of vocation.

The recuperative period of not being forced to work at a particular kind of job allows for the redemptive result of “rising” in another job.  Worth of a human being is recognized in allowing for a “second” chance.  The historical test of a model which has worked, the Easter Paradigm is one of hope and oriented with a view to the future — however long that may be.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Federal Disability Retirement: Returning to the Boredom of Health

Everyone desires to attain a path of certainties, where life has a rhythm of regularity, predictability and consistency.  We often complain of a life of boredom, but there is a distinction to be made between “being bored” and having what some would consider a “boring existence”.

One need only encounter a life-threatening emergency, or a crisis impacting self, family members or friends — or a serious medical condition.  Then, one yearns for those “boring” days of yore, when living a daily existence of merely being pain-free, when one could bend, reach, turn, twist, pick up a cup of coffee — without a thought of invasive and excruciating pain; of a time when focusing upon a task did not require one’s utmost energy and stamina; where the intrusion of nightmares, anxiety and panic attacks did not paralyze one’s totality of being.  Living a boring life for those encountering the “excitement” of a medical condition, as opposed to “being bored”, found a consistency of a rhythm of certainty.

In preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, it is the goal of the Federal or Postal employee to enter into a period of a recuperative universe, in order to get back to the days of a boring existence.  Boredom is not necessarily a negative thing; indeed, when one is beset with a medical condition which prevents one from performing the essential elements of one’s job, the very notion that one’s prior existence of health was somehow less than exciting, is a puzzle to those who have lost their health.

Federal Disability Retirement is a chance to attain the boring life of yore; preparing properly the application for submission; formulating it effectively; and filing it to attain the goal of returning to that former self, is a consideration worth making.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire