OPM Disability Retirement: The Upper Limit of Havoc

Is there a limit?  Or, is Man’s capacity for havoc, mayhem, untoward devastation limitless and incalculable?

There is havoc on the personal level, and then on the societal level; and perhaps if we just turned off the news, refused to read anything but the local newspapers, then our bifurcated levels would merge into a synthesis of one.  You cannot even go to a 4th of July parade without fear of being shot at; you can barely make a living, nowadays, with inflation eating away at every penny, gas prices skyrocketing, and food prices soaring to unaffordable limits.

In the aggregate, do these all qualify as “havoc”?

Certainly, we do not have the havoc of Ukraine, where entire cities once beautifully landscaped are now devastated to mere images of rubble and mayhem.  Entire populations have disappeared; daily shelling from Russian advances have made survival and habitation impossible.  But wherever people live, in small towns and other cities — where none of what has been described has actually occurred — can one live like the proverbial ostrich with its head buried in the sand?

But then, of course, there is the personal level of havoc — say, of a medical condition.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition where that medical condition has resulted in the serious contemplation of the need to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) — on a personal level, leaving aside the greater societal level — you have probably reached the upper limit of havoc in your life.

Contact a FERS Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and begin to lower the upper limit of havoc in your personal life by preparing, formulating and filing an effective FERS Disability Retirement application.

And as for the societal upper limit of havoc — of shootings and deaths; of the ongoing pandemic; of wars in other parts of the world, etc. — the buried head is often the only way to avoid the havoc, and perhaps ignorance is bliss, after all.

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 Lifetime Achievement Award

There is a sadness necessarily attached to such an award: It is an acknowledgement that a person’s worth has come to an end.  A life’s end is recognized when such an award is granted, and no one believes that anything further will be attained.  It is a dismissive award — a pinning of a goodby to the lapel of one’s mortality and an applause that soon fades because of achievements recognized and easily forgotten.

No one says of the recipient of such an award, “Boy, but does she have such potential!”  Rather, it is the very awarding of it which is the indicator that: The curtain is closing; the rocking chair is there in the corner; it is time to let others in the door; and, your time has passed.

What can it possibly mean for a person to accept such an award?  How can others determine the achievement within a span of a lifetime, and can it ever be rescinded?  What if, upon receipt of such an award, a person turns around and commits a heinous crime — do we then walk out of the ceremony shaking our heads and whisper to one another, “Well, he would have achieved it but for….”?  Isn’t that always the party-pooper conclusion, when we say of this or that: Except for; but for; if only…?

It is like saying that X was a great president except for Y, or that such-and-such was the best leader but for this-and-that.  To receive or be offered the “lifetime achievement award” is to declare the end of one’s life; to refuse it, is to embrace life and one’s future.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who believe that filing for Federal Disability Retirement means that it is an “end” to something — somewhat akin to receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award — such a thought should be reconsidered.

Filing for FERS Disability Retirement is not an end, but a mere beginning: It allows the Federal or Postal employee to focus upon one’s health, and then to consider another vocation or career in the private sector by allowing him or her to make up to 80% of what one earned in the Federal sector, and continue to receive a disability retirement annuity. Consult with an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law to “get the facts”, lest you become embroiled in the fallacy that Federal Disability Retirement is tantamount to receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement from Federal Government Employment: Life’s enjoyment

Are we ever taught that?  If the answer is in the negative, then from whence did we learn, attain or otherwise receive the tools to engage in the purity of sensation such that we could embrace it?  Did we become such through osmosis; from imprints; from learned behavior encompassing a lifetime of observations reinforced by wisdom’s refrain upon the blank chalkboard of our consciousness?  How does one “enjoy” life, anymore than learning to ride a bicycle, drive a car or care for a cute puppy (the last in the list, of course, need not be learned, but only be taken in by the natural affinity one has upon seeing the eyes of warmth, intelligence and fierce loyalty displayed, and is an exception and one of life’s conundrums to be accepted without questioning)?

There are many who walk about, who have absolutely no clue as to how one can, should or would have any enjoyment at all; and thus the total immersion in one’s work, or projects begun and always left unfinished – for, to complete them would mean that something ended, and that would force one into a reflection about the meaning, value and relevance of one’s activities, would it not?

One often hears the familiar refrain:  “I don’t know how to enjoy life; to me, unless I am busy with work, chores, updating my Facebook page, texting friends or jogging, I can’t be happy.”  Productivity is the measure of success; time set aside for vacations – despite still doing email, texting, messaging or other forms of “connectivity” as advertised to be the horror of all horrors if loss of it were to ever occur – is a concept that questions the very meaning of life’s enjoyment.  For, if one pauses for a moment to reflect:  Is the treadmill one is on merely for purposes of getting off for a moment, then to get right back on in order to find, again, a time to get off for another period of repose?

If so, how is that any different from Camus’ essay on the absurdity of life’s perspective as seen through the eyes of a French Existentialist, and specifically, of the Myth of Sisyphus and the condemnation by the gods to roll the boulder up the hill, only to watch it tumble down, then to engage in the eternal monotony of pushing it back up, only to observe its descent?

Life’s enjoyment, and the promise for tomorrow, was always meant to be more than that – of a daily sense of joy, a widespread sensation of contentment, and an ease of burden when once we were innocent children playing with but a ready laughter to give.  It is the truth that haunts, and especially the proverbial quip about the final straw that breaks the camel’s back.  With the persistent onslaught of stimuli unable to be resisted, we allow for the daily bombardment to deplete the little energy we have in reserve.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition not only intervenes in the ability and capacity to perform the essential elements of the Federal or Postal job, but further, depletes, diminishes and – ultimately — destroys even the potentiality to enjoy life and all of its complex presentations, the option to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits must be considered.

Yes, it is a long and arduous bureaucratic process.  No, going through the process will not enhance, for the short term, life’s enjoyment.  But in the end, necessary changes are called for – nay, compelled by – medical conditions that interrupt life’s enjoyment, and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is to enhance that potential for the future enjoyment of life’s joys, while perhaps foregoing the short-term stubble of inconvenient interludes of angst-driven necessities.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Living versus being alive

There is a difference, is there not?  Of hummingbirds and cardinals bright against the backdrop of an evergreen; of a child running across the grassy knoll; then of aged men in nursing homes, shuttered away in corners where the drool of saliva unwiped reveals the tarnish of human unkindness; and of prisons rotting away with crowded cells for addicts whose sickness is considered a crime where, in ages past, opium dens and other vices merely preached in empty churches of the difference between mortal and venial sins unrehearsed.  Yet, we have somehow been duped into believing that “movement” is the basis of “living”, and its antonym, the lack thereof, constitutes something less than.

It is often when a medical condition overwhelms one with a debilitating illness, or a chronic state of pain; or, even of inconvenience in not being able to function as other “normal” people do, that it begins to “hit home”:  living is good; being alive, also, is worth it.  Perhaps the distinction is scoffed at by the healthy; as youth believes in the immortality and invincibility of foolhardiness, and often tests it to the detriment of failure and embarrassment, so wisdom may accompany an insight of some rather insignificant profundity – that we can boast well when everything is merely a hypothetical, as in ivory towers of university concepts, but we are all willing to compromise when the stark choices of life present themselves within limited contexts of concealed alternatives.

Being alive isn’t all that bad; living is preferable, but sometimes we have to accept the choices as presented by the reality of our unique and individualized circumstances.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition necessitates ending one’s career and shortening one’s desire for continuation in a chosen field, the recognition and admission as to the limitations imposed by one’s mortality, health and physical boundaries, as well as the impact of psychiatric conditions upon one’s ability to have the cognitive focus, concentration and attention to detail, will oftentimes require compromises that come close to the distinction noted – of living, versus being alive.

Perhaps the contrast has not swung in the pendulum of such extremes of options, but the feeling is certainly something that hits close to home.  For, continuation in the job will only further and progressively debilitate, such that you will come to a point of no return and end up simply being alive.  Living, as the preferable choice, is to take the steps in 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, precisely in order to prevent that state of last option prior to the ultimate test of mortality’s humor – of merely being alive, as opposed to living.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement: Dostoevsky and impassioned monologues

Does anyone read such an author, anymore?  At least, once one is beyond the assigned reading list and mandatory college compulsions that allegedly define those who are “educated” as opposed to not, does anyone perform the act out of pleasure?  Or, perhaps we would consider it more like self-torture.

Once the diploma is rolled, handed and received upon the platform of recognized accolades for accomplished feats now disseminated throughout all levels of society, where “blue collar” or physical labor is no longer perceived as acceptable and everyone must be subjected to the torture of reading Dostoevsky and his impassioned monologues that seem to meander forever upon a single scene, does anyone pick up a copy of such titles as, The Idiot, or The Brothers Karamazov, or of that “classic”, Crime and Punishment, and take valuable leisure time to plod and plug through such lengthy paragraphs upon puzzling paragraphs of reflective self-aggrandizing streams of consciousness?

Did a former generation or beyond really think like such characters, or is there something uniquely troubling about the “Russian” culture such that the depths of such rich history encompassing misery, war, poverty, the tension between power and the powerless, the tradition of the Czar and the more authoritarian lineage of Stalin, the current power structure, etc.?

Perhaps the Russian people can relate more readily with such authors and comprehend the scenes of reflective streams of long-winded monologues that can only be characterized as “impassioned” and tumultuous by any standard of emotional fervor.

There are, however, such similar examples in narratives prepared for a Federal Disability Retirement application, written by Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers in response to the questions and queries posed on SF 3112A, Applicant’s Statement of Disability.  Such impassioned monologues tend to include a lengthy history of past wrongs committed (i.e., Crime and Punishment); a journey describing tremendous upheavals and pain (i.e., The Brothers Karamazov); and of character caricatures that depicts a lack of focus and streamlined narrative (e.g., The Idiot).

Most of us claim to have read Dostoevsky; some of us make the further and surprising admission that we have “enjoyed” him; and some few of us actually continue to pick up his translated works and persist in reading him.  However, such pleasure-reading should be uniquely sequestered for the late-night fireside restorations, with a glass of wine or other inebriant to counter such impassioned monologues, and certainly only within a proper context of applicable content, and formulating such meanderings in a Federal Disability Retirement application by the literary device of stream of consciousness is not the “winning” mechanism to obtain a Federal Disability Retirement annuity.

Keep the focus and maintain a streamlined narrative in creating the nexus between the medical condition, the positional duties of the Federal or Postal job, and the impact between the two, and leave Dostoevsky and impassioned monologues to yesteryear’s literary classics rarely read, uncommonly desired, and never quite understood.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement Benefits: Immunity

It is both a state of protective legal cover, as well as possessing enough strength of resistance to counter the invective of marauding viruses invading beyond the walls of health-moats keeping out unwanted Trojan horse violators.

In the former meaning, it is often granted through agreeing to deliver the goods on others, and breaching the code of silence in stabbing unsuspecting co-conspirators in the proverbial backsides, but assuring survival of the weakest link in the chain of criminal conduct.  In the latter sense, one is told to “build up” one’s immunity, or to become inoculated in order to obtain it; and in a wider and more pervasive annotation of the word, it generally possesses the connotation of self-protection, egocentrism and self-centered focus against the world at large.

Further, when we talk about the “Teflon” effect, it is akin to having an immunity against criticism, of possessing that self-effacing sheen that never spoils, and a reputation that while others may walk about this world with soiled garments depicting poor circumstances and unfortunate trials of reduced means, that special person who has the “Midas touch” is the one immune from the everyday travesties that desecrate the rest of us.

Immunity is that which we seek – for ourselves, to protect against others, and always as a wall of separation in the event that the Mediaeval horrors of the Black Plague come back to haunt and destroy, so long as it fails to touch the inner sanctum of those who are blessed with the inoculation of life’s fortunes never to be interrupted.

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 idea of immunity quickly becomes a fiction that only others can abide by.  At one’s weakest point of vulnerability – when the medical condition depletes, progressively destroys and become a chronic condition of perpetual misery – does the Federal agency and the Postal facility suddenly take away all semblance of immunity.

It is withdrawn; it is voided; it is disallowed until further notice.

Immunity is no longer part of the “deal” and, instead, full prosecutorial discretion is suddenly imposed.  No accommodations; punitive actions are suddenly initiated; and it is as if the grand Plague of former times has advanced with greater force and energized vitriol than ever, and the Federal or Postal employee is left with no choice but 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.

Thus is immunity often granted when one least has need of it – unless, of course, you are caught in the very act of involvement as a co-conspirator, in which case it is cloaked in a request to sharpen the knives to harm others.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Federal Disability Retirement Benefits: Contented misery

Does the one who strives for happiness as a goal ever escape the bonds of contented misery?  It is the ecstasy of a moment’s glimpse, and then the feeling is gone; for, such is the fleeting nature of a sensation, and more of an encumbrance than a plateau of embraced attainment.  Can happiness be gauged, like a heart monitor, taking one’s blood pressure, or in that millisecond of pain in determining the glucose level through the pinprick of time?

Once, in generations past, when neighbors asked of one another the state of affairs, the politics of an era, and listened by that long-lost tradition of taking one’s hat off, lazily fanning one’s self in the sweaty afternoon of the blazing sun, people used to actually pause during the day without a watch or cellphone to check and recheck; and conversations took the meandering deliberation of voices undulating without the tense pressure of time, money and restrictive covenants imposed by society’s need to compel movement.

Happiness was not the goal, but the byproduct of social interaction.  Misery was reduced to the loss of purpose, violation of normative values and now, in modernity, replaced with contented misery.  No, it is not an oxymoron, for it is a state of Being accepted by most and recognized by few, and the duality of a seemingly conceptual friction is merely on its surface; for, such an accepted state of being exists precisely because we seek that which can never be attained but for a fleeting moment, like trying to grasp, catch and hang on to the flowing robe of an angel as that heavenly being floats by with a sprinkling of residues depicting the regrets of our lives.

We become contented with our own miseries, because we seek to attain a state of Being which can never be the essence of life, but merely the flux of sensations resulting from man’s worthy journey akin to a teleological embrace.  Worth is tied intricately and inextricably with projects; and though Heidegger’s quip that such human work and activity is merely to avoid the inevitable encounter with Nothingness, it is nevertheless driven by a need to advance, a value in accomplishment, and a sense of creativity in the process of what we do, how we achieve it, and where we are going in life.

Contented misery is to exchange all of that for a moment of sensation, extrapolated to an unattainable and unreachable state of Being, and that is why misery prevails within a plateau of accepted contentment.

Such is the state of Being for Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the health condition prevents the Federal and Postal employee from performing the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal position, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.  For, think for a moment – one’s career and mission in life is perhaps interrupted and impeded, and the Federal or Postal employee must consider alternatives, such as preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.

But if a sensation is all that is sought, as opposed to considering the next steps into the future – such as an alternative vocation in the private sector after obtaining a successful approval from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management – then contented misery will have won.  On the other hand, if a Federal Disability Retirement annuity is successfully obtained, there is a chance that the future may hold further opportunities, and the restrictions of a contented misery may be replaced with that which Man was compelled to engage:  a project or activity beyond the sphere of mere sensations.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement for Federal Employees: The compromised life

We all make them, though we deny it.  Iconoclasts scorn it; the extremes of either side scoff at it; and, in the end, it reflects the reality of who we are, how we live, and by what vaunted principles we purportedly possess.

On a theoretical level, it is easy to remain the stalwart – that singular entity standing on principle and commitment.  The one who has never experienced war – to express beliefs of “courage”, “unwavering loyalty” and blind bravery declared in wrappings of the flag and national identity.  Or of fidelity and traditional values despite personal shortcomings of multiple marital infidelities and 3 or 4 marriages, with the devastation of a trail of longing children with a hole in each heart, wishing that principles could be exchanged for a single memory of playing catch on a summer’s day.

If you are sequestered whether by wealth or capacity to ignore, it is easy to shout out principles; but, then, when the test of life intrudes, the failings of reality reconstitute an extraordinary hypothetical into a quivering crumbling of an ordinary person.

Ordinariness is certainly rarely looked upon as the paradigm to follow, and the argument often goes:  You never want to dumb down deviancy (Moynihan’s famous phrase extrapolated from a generation or two ago, lost forever by events of social and cultural turmoil hence), and so, even if no one actually lives like the pinnacle of beautiful thoughts and voices stated by writers, essayists and politicians (who themselves bifurcate “personal conduct” from the espoused rhetoric emitted from hollow mouths with a dead-panned look of seriousness), the common masses are admonished by rebukes of being responsible for the “cultural rot” that dissipates throughout.

Reality has a way of compromising the apex of beautiful words, paragraphs, pages and entire narratives of a singular life.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition may be preventing the Federal or Postal worker from being able to perform all of the essential elements of the position occupied, the concept of a compromised life is now a reality.  For, the sequential perspective of what is expected – of continuing until retirement age a career fulfilled, with regular promotions and deserved merit pay – may need to be ‘adjusted’ in accordance with the reality of life’s impositions.

Having a compromised life and accepting the compromises of life’s misgivings is not a sin, nor a diminution of one’s principled belief-system; instead, in preparing, formulating and filing a Federal Disability Retirement application through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, it is merely a recognition that theoretical foundations were always meant to be modified, and those speechifying vanguards of social commentators never meant the fulfillment of their own words, anyway, and it was always the compromised life that reflected the reality of the boorish insistence that we were angels and gods unknown.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: False Promises

Is it an oxymoron?  If it is made, how can it be negated by untruth; for, if it is a nothingness at the outset which compels null and void the substantive content of the thing itself, how can it purport to be what it is while at the same time creating an abyss of meaninglessness?  A promise cannot be false if it is to have the very meaning of a promise; and yet, we know that there exists such falsity of posited assurances, if not proposed by dishonest individuals and con-men, then at least by unintentional or otherwise mistaken pillars of vain malfeasance.

False promises are not promises at all; they are likened to nonsensical statements, which are similarly non-statements precisely because of the meaningless nature of the declarations.  Just as Bertrand Russell’s playful cunning in the statement, “The present King of France is bald” – that is both nonsensical and allegedly violates the laws of logic (specifically the Law of the Excluded Middle) – so, false promises cannot exist as either falsehoods or as promises precisely because they negate each other in their very existence side by side.

But in the world of pragmatic affairs, we know that they are made each and every day.  We are promised daily, and falsely, by individuals, entities, agencies and organizations, whether with or without a handshake, sometimes in writing, other moments by verbal implication, and even every now and again sprinkled with a smile, a nod, a wink and a prayer.  Promises made have an expectation of being kept; and broken promises, like false ones, cut deep into the wounds of betrayal, and haunt us with a profound sense of anger and reeking with the vengeful fury of a violation well beyond mere resentment.  There are few things in life that compensate for false promises.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers, Federal Disability Retirement is just one of the few compensatory alternatives to the expectation of a false promise made, implied or otherwise denoted.  Perhaps it was the long hours of dedicated and uncompensated time devoted; or the expectation that loyalty would be a bilateral avenue, as opposed to a unilateral desecration of implied trust.

In any event, one would have thought that “accommodations” would be made upon the interruption of a medical condition, when the medical conditions resulted in one’s inability to perform the essential elements of one’s Federal position or Postal job.  But, alas, such accommodations cannot be made; the dedication of those many years, and sometimes decades, cannot be recalled but for yesterday’s contribution; and the promises seemingly made cannot be false when, all of a sudden, a question is fired back:  Is it in writing anywhere?  What or who ever gave you that idea?

For the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker, filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits is often not just the best alternative, but the most prudent option remaining and still available – in rebuttal to false promises made, and truth declarations long forgotten and left behind in the corridors of remembrances no longer written in stone, but disappeared into the office shredder worth the value of the paper it was never written upon.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire