FERS Medical Retirement from OPM: Better Days Ahead

If you have had the worst of days, then looking forward to better days becomes an undeniable fact of predictable certainty.

Good and bad days occur for all of us, whether determined by some objective standard, or by the whims of altering moods.  Like weather patterns and tempestuous personalities, the accounting of days and their qualities alter by minutes and lesser fractions thereof.

Human beings possess an excellent capacity for self-determination and defiance of fate and karma, both of which are influenced by the attitudes we display.  Can we always count on better days ahead?  And more to the point, how can we contain and circumscribe the bad days?

It has been variously pointed out that frustration is produced by the broader gap between expectation and achievement, where one’s unrealistic anticipation of goals to achieve falls far short of realistic ends annotated.  Thus, it is always essential to identify items which will come to fruition no matter what.

In other words, always include in any “to-do list” items that you are bound to be accomplished, anyway.  More importantly, circumscribe the boundaries of the current “day” and do not include more than an identifiably limited time quantification.  Stated differently, there should be a beginning time and an end point as to what constitutes a particular day.

Finally, it is always a given that we should discount Mondays — for, the day following a weekend will almost always be disastrous, no matter how we attempt to decorate it with outward appearances of successful annotations.

Are some of these tactics mere attempts at self-delusion?  Perhaps, but if we are to avoid the fates of mischievous gods who playfully attempt to throw lightning bolts in the paths of our daily lives, we must anticipate them and adjust our actions accordingly.

And for Federal employees and U.S. Post Workers who are engaged in the frustrating bureaucratic process of applying for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS, any and every mechanism employed in order to sustain a sense of humor will help you survive the maddening administrative process and help you survive to a successful end.

For, sometimes, the gods who play with our lives are not those mystical creatures watchful among the clouds above, but mere mortals walking to and fro amidst the bureaucratic halls of government offices.

And to maintain your sanity, you may want to consult with a FERS Disability Lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law to see what legal shields may be effective against OPM’s random and capricious lightening bolts of denied applications.

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: The Acceleration Principle

In economics, the principle makes the logical connection between the demand for consumer goods and the requirement of accelerated production needs in order to meet the higher demand.  In other words, when the demand for consumer goods increases, it logically follows that the demand for equipment will accelerate because the means of production in order to meet the consumer demands will need to be fulfilled.

In a similar vein, there is a parallel principle in other sectors of life — educational acceleration of mediocrity, for example.  It would make sense that if a country’s educational system systematically reduces its standards of excellence, that as the years pass, everyone over time will be dumber because those students who go through the “system” and go on to become teachers, will teach the next generation of students at a reduced level of rigor, and the acceleration principle will come into play as each successive generation teaches the next at a dumbed-down level.

Similarly, wouldn’t this same principle be applicable in areas of reading, for example — where, a nation which reads less but expends a greater amount of time in watching videos, becoming entrenched in the virtual maze of computers and Smartphones, or in video games, etc., will accelerate into a population of illiteracy and cultural ineptitude?

How about in health — isn’t there a similar principle experienced, where being young can somewhat compensate for a chronic health condition, but where age or some traumatic event can trigger and accelerate the health condition where, heretofore, it had been somewhat managed and controlled?

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management, of course, will turn that on its head if you are not careful.  They will argue thus: You had a preexisting condition; there are no objective indicators that it worsened during your tenure as a Federal Employee.  Thus, your case is denied.  Contact a FERS Disability Lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and consider that the acceleration principle is both valid and effective, if delineated in the best and proper manner.

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 Application: Appropriateness

Wives insist upon it; youth ignore it; the old display it without thought because that is the way they were brought up.

Often, people don’t even know that there is such a thing as “appropriateness”, thinking in this age of modernity that anything and everything is acceptable.  It used to be that foul language was appropriate only in bars and Sunday get-togethers for football games; nowadays, we think its cute when a toddler emits long dissertations of 4-letter words like a dog vomiting following a feast of eating leftover scraps from the garbage bin.

If you say to your spouse, “I put the scissors away,” the appropriate response to expect might be, “Thank you”, or even, “Where?”  But as spouses always confound, instead, the question might be, “When did you put it away?”  Now, the excitement of marriage is that one’s spouse should always keep you on your toes, and the inappropriateness of the question is only a reflection of that, so long as the context is misunderstood.  For, the question, “When did you put it away” is a puzzling one, and mystery is the foundation of excitement when it comes to a marriage.

However, if you query back with: “Why did you ask that, as opposed to the appropriate counter-question, ‘Where did you put it away?’”  And the answer back: “Because I looked for it an hour ago and it wasn’t there.”  Context is important in appropriateness.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that a Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS must be filed by necessity through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, appropriateness is a factor which always must be considered — the appropriate tone to convey; the appropriate case-laws to cite; the appropriate arguments to make, etc.  For, the cousin of appropriateness is “effectiveness”, and that is the goal to focus upon, unlike the spouse who asks the mysterious question of “when” as opposed to “where”.

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.

 

Postal & Federal Disability Retirement under FERS: Adaptation

It is how a species survives — and even thrives — in the face of changing circumstances.  Human beings clearly have an adaptive advantage in comparison to other species; otherwise, how to explain the extinction of multiple others while the overpopulation of ours?

Scientists have noted the general utilitarian talents of our type — not the best at anything, but the capacity to compensate despite our lack.  But ours is no longer a world where physical adaptation is the primal key.  Rather, because of technology’s dominance, our cognitive ability to adapt is being tested.

More and more, the psychological stresses bombarding us test the capacity of the human species — and we are failing at every turn.  The stresses of daily life; the mental pressures; the voluminous demands for multi-tasking just to get through the day — and when a medical condition hits us, is it any wonder that we are unable to adapt?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who can no longer perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, “adaptation” may require filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.  To adapt is to recognize and change with the modifying forces of nature.

Consult with a Federal Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and begin the earnest process of recognizing that adaptation is necessary where change is inevitable.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: The Lighter Moments

It might just be a certain look given upon a misinterpreted statement; of what a child does before the perfidies of society begins to corrupt them; or just a burst of laughter upon an innocent comment meant to uplift from a serious incident.  Whatever the circumstances, it is the “lighter moment” which often makes it all worthwhile, and allows for the difficulties of the context to remain endurable.

Life is hard enough: Of paying bills; of worrying about the future; of what will become of our children, our aging parents, and even of our very own future.  It is as if we walk around with scowls etched upon our faces, not out of free will or choice, but because the difficulties themselves force it upon us.  Then comes a lighter moment — a comment, a misstatement, an unintended act or spoken word which brings a smile upon an otherwise stern and impassive face.

We live for those moments.  It is the pause between the serious content, the period before the next sentence and the break until the following chapter.  But when even the lighter moments fail to curl the lips upward and the old joke no longer triggers a burst of laughter, then it becomes clear that life has become too serious even for the grumps who seemingly never enjoy life.  Medical conditions can do that to a person — of draining life out of every last bit of goodness such that even the lighter moments no longer are lighter, but remain as heavy as the thousand-pound metaphor that weighs us down.

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, the struggle of juggling work, health, family and livelihood can be so out of balance that disability retirement under FERS must be considered.

Consult with an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and see what your options are, and whether Federal Disability Retirement may be a viable course to pursue, lest the lighter moment in your life may forever become extinguished into a cavern of darkness where the light of hope may never again shine.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: The tenuous seat

It may be that where you are sitting, you have that constant sense of insecurity and angst; that the legs that are currently holding you upon the wooden seat are unstable, questionable, perhaps even possessing a history of prior breakage and collapse.  Is the position you hold flimsy, weak, subject to the winds of change and the moods that prevail?

Life isn’t supposed to be that way; or so we are taught from a young age.  There are “rules of the game”; people “have to” abide by certain unspoken (or openly declared) constrictors of behavioral acceptability; and yet, the rule-breakers seem always to be able to flaunt the exceptions and sidestep, overstep and trample upon the boundaries that everyone else must abide by.

The tenuous seat is the one that the person sensitive of and susceptible to the whims of societal constructs so diligently struggles to abide by; it is the vulnerable who always pays the price, while the brash and uncaring go on and pass by everyone else.  The tenuous seat is the one that the ordinary person sits upon; then, when a medical condition comes along and weakens the structural foundations even further, the very wobbling legs that barely withstood the vicissitudes of time begin to fracture and reveal their internal fissures.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have a sense of sitting in the tenuous seat because the impact of the medical condition is beginning to take its toll, it is time to make plans to secure a more stable future — or, metaphorically, to consider sitting in another chair.

The tenuous seat is the one you have been sitting in for these past several years, and it is time to play the rules of the game of musical chairs, and to find the one that will “fit” the seat of your pants, by preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

The tenuous seat is the one that needs repair, and the one that needs repair is also the one that needs replacement.  When life’s chair that once provided a sense of stability and rest begins to wobble with the changes of time, it is an indication that the next step in the musical chairs of life’s stormy periods calls upon the Federal or Postal employee to initiate the steps to embrace the change; it is time to consult with an attorney who specializes exclusively in Federal Disability Retirement law.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: The spam of life

Have you ever been amazed by how much “spam” there is?  Consider how many individuals, organizations, groups of individuals, people sitting in their bedrooms with a laptop, etc., trying to scam and spam, for whatever nefarious reasons hidden; it is as if the whole world has gone mad.

Is it true that the great majority of such leftovers often filtered by computer software dependent upon the dubious intent of those who would infect and harm, is produced for the most part by a single individual, group or entity, and the rest and residue by the remainder and leftovers less calculating and invidious?

How is it that we have accepted such human detritus as a normal component within our daily lives, such that we even have a special “folder” that is designated for “spam”, where the software mechanism kindly identifies and re-routes such unwanted crumbs into that neatly identified space, so that in the morning we can just click upon the icon next to it that deletes it into a “garbage” can.

In “real life”, is there such neatness?

But that there would be a software mechanism that rerouted all of the annoyances and irrelevancies in life itself, like the spam that is cordoned off, isolated and singularly quarantined so that we never have to actually deal with it.  Wouldn’t that be nice?  A person who you do not want to speak with begins to approach you.  Bam!  He is immediately carted away and placed into an isolation cell.  A problem within the family arises that is distasteful and irritating.  Slam!  It is summarily solved by swiftly being designated as a spam of life.

Symptoms of a medical condition begin to impact your health.  Pause.  Somehow, you cannot always equate the spam of the computer world with the spam of life; not everything can be simply rerouted and discarded, forgotten forever.  It would be nice if such were the ingredients of life, like that in the world of computers; unfortunately, some things have to be dealt with in a different manner, by a differing approach.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers needing 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 spam of life is the medical condition itself, and despite our desire to have a computer software somehow make it go away like computer spams that try and infect the technological creations of modernity, there is no special manner in which it can neatly be tucked away into a separate folder.

Instead, the spam of life must be dealt with as with all other similar problems in life’s complexities – by careful preparation, fastidious formulation and timely filing of an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, so that other computer spams and unwanted spams of life can be more easily dealt with for a better tomorrow free from the junk mail of a future yet unknown.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employees Disability Retirement Benefits: Weather and the Prognosis

Prognostication of weather, beyond a day (or sometimes a couple of hours) can be treacherous and self-defeating.  With enhanced computer networks which reevaluate information as it is fed with information concerning patterns of predictability, shifting atmospheric changes and spectrums of barometric alterations; cumulatively, a pie in the face is preferable despite advanced technologies allowing for respectable predictability.

Similarly, the medical field is expected to provide predictions of future events and as-yet unforeseen consequences.  Because medicine is considered a “science”, the level of accuracy is required beyond mere witch’s brew, or the spell of waved wand cast upon an unsuspecting eye.  Thus do doctors engage in percentages and probabilities; of mortality, X-percentage, give or take a few months, based upon studies delineated in some obscure journal presumably respected and hidden in the esoteric towers of ivory bastions.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are contemplating filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the requirement for Federal and Postal employees includes information that the medical condition will last a minimum of 12 months (from the date of filing for Federal Disability Retirement).  Persistent and prevalent misinterpretation of this requirement pervades; one often hears the belief that the Federal or Postal employee must be away from work, or otherwise incapacitated, for that period of 12 months before filing.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

The requirement is merely one which denotes a prognosis or prediction, no more than what the medical field can predict and what the weather can portend.  It merely means that a Federal or Postal employee who suffers 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 positional duties, will be so prevented and impacted for a minimum of 12 months.

Any doctor worth his or her salt can provide a prognosis of how long the medical condition will last, and whether or not such a prognosis is as accurate as the 10-day forecast promulgated by weather entities is often irrelevant.  For, in the end, the Federal or Postal employee who suffers from the medical condition and who needs to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, knows in his or her “heart of hearts” how long the medical condition will last, whether it is for a day or a season, or a lifetime of chronicity requiring longterm care and treatment.

As one’s own body, mind and soul rarely mistakes the shifting changes of life, so the weather and prognosis of one’s own health can be established through the experience of pain, agony, and the pounding of deterioration perpetrated upon the vulnerability of a mortal being.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Avoidance and Delay

Human beings have an uncanny capacity for avoidance.  In the greater genus of the universe we identify as the “Animal Kingdom”, where survival of the fittest determines the genetic viability of the evolutionary scales of neutral justice, avoidance means potential death, and delay constitutes a certainty for an untimely demise.  For, as thought and reflection is the pause between an event and a necessary response, so avoidance and delay is that interlude between necessity and regret.

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 as a Federal Employee or a U.S. Postal Worker, the avoidance of the inevitable, and the delay for the obvious, often becomes an intransigent approach to life’s misgivings.

The act of 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 thought of as a step of finality — an admission to one’s self that the battle has been lost, the war’s outcome has been determined, and the cards dealt must now be played, with nothing left to trade in or replace.  That is the “short view”, as colored by the perspective of avoidance and delay.  The “long view” is that there is actually life after Federal Service, and potentiality for growth beyond the U.S. Postal Service.

We become entrenched in the habits of our own making, and while filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through OPM may seem like a step of finality, it is actually just a step in a different direction, where one can open up new avenues for a second vocation, while at the same time securing a financial future for stability and further growth.

Avoidance and delay — they are the price one may pay for the limitations imposed by our own lack of imagination, but the greater canvas of life opens up the power and creativity hidden within the deep recesses of a childhood potentiality we once held on to, but somehow let go in this journey we call “life”, which often puts us down and tramples upon the flights of a child’s wide-eyed vision of the greater universe.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Limbo Eruptions

Of certain politicians, it has become commonplace to expect such occurrences, but with a slight change in consonants in the first word.  As it stands, however, the word as left alone is a state of another kind; not of relational states of erotic ecstasy, but rather a border on the region of heaven or hell, where an intermediate state of oblivion exists in a transitional state of suspension.  To that extent, perhaps the two concepts are similar.

Such eruptions of inactivity and suspension are intangible and untenable; human beings, by nature, are vibrant beings constantly “on the move“, and wanting always to advance, progress and contribute to the aggregation of societal cauldron of accomplishments.  That is why, when a Federal employee or a U.S. Postal worker finds him or herself in a state of rancid and stale waters, where a medical condition paralyzes any progress and prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing the requisite and essential elements of one’s Federal position, it is tantamount to experiencing a limbo eruption.

How long it lasts; to what extent it freezes; and when it will end; these are questions which only the paramour of time would know; and the bed which is being made is the price of warmth or cold one must endure if the Federal or Postal employee insists upon staying in that relationship.  For, like the “other” such similar-sounding concept, the limbo eruption can become a permanent feature of one’s transitional state, unless one files for Federal OPM Disability Retirement benefits under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

Federal Disability Retirement is not only an option, but a benefit one can fight for, if one meets all of the eligibility criteria as revealed in the Federal Disability Retirement laws governing the state of affairs.

Filing it may seem easy; obtaining it is not so easily accomplished; securing it for one’s future can sometimes be daunting.  But like the illicit eruptions which are sure to come for unnamed but otherwise well-known individuals, the limbo eruption of the Federal or Postal employee who suffers from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal positional duties, must surely be overcome, lest the bed made is suddenly discovered by the jealous spouse who suspects more than a mere hug in the middle of the night.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire