Federal Worker Disability Retirement: Beyond Politics

Aristotle viewed man as a “political animal”.  What does this mean?  Essentially, that we interact, live within a social context, intersect with conflicting needs and contentious ideas, etc.

In short, we live in a society where a common purpose is engaged and, in the course of merely living, we must by necessity intersect amidst competing interests.  In our current age, being a political animal is viewed in heightened extremes of partisanship.  Some view this as self-destructive; others, as a healthy outlet for society’s needs.

Whatever the political nature of each individual, what party affiliation, what views — whether conservative or liberal — everyone still has to live their lives, beyond elections, crisis, pandemics, etc.

For Federal employees and Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, the fight to obtain a disability retirement benefit from OPM is the “living” of life.  Whatever your politics, living life always should be the focus of your life.

Contact an OPM Medical Retirement Attorney who specializes in FERS Disability Retirement Law and pursue the living of life beyond politics.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: The persistent tinnitus of life

The root word that contains a valid diagnosis of a medical condition, sometimes comes about gradually, others at a persistent rate of uncommon urgency; and whether by emanation of a serious, primary condition such as Meniere’s Disease, a brain tumor or cardiac elements impacting upon the heart or blood vessels, or mere residuals from a short-lived ear infection, the low, persistent ringing can interrupt and disrupt focus, concentration, attention to detail, and lead to depression, anxiety and panic that the idea of sounds being heard without the objective world recognizing or acknowledging them, can indeed be disturbing.

Tinnitus is a serious medical condition; yet, while we seek treatment for such a state of health deviancy, we allow the persistent tinnitus of life to surround, abound and confound us throughout.  The persistent tinnitus of life is almost an unavoidable juggernaut in modernity.   Yes, we can make the inane argument that, as we are the gatekeepers that can allow, deny or limit the access granted on any given day, who can withstand the active and passive onslaught of daily and onerous, oppressive bombardment of the multitudinous spires of high-speed jettisoning of such information overload on a daily, consistent basis?

From blaring headlines screaming while standing passively in a grocery store, to gas pumps that speak back to you with the selective entertainment headlines of the day; from unsolicited advertisements personalized to one’s computer based upon information provided and shared despite every precautionary steps taken, to mediums of electronic communication that are depended upon and mandated in this day and age just to remain employed; we cannot put a wall between the need for a soul’s quietude and the persistent tinnitus of life.  If not completely, then how about in some limited form?

The trick, then, is not to succumb completely, nor attempt to sequester one’s self in a hermitage of complete abandonment; rather, to selectively distinguish between information of useless human detritus from that of relevance and significance; in short, between Orwellian linguistic garbage and that which constitutes “wisdom”.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are contemplating 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, the importance of limiting the persistent tinnitus of life applies to the process of preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, especially by recognizing the distinction between truth and falsity, between objective facts and inaccurate innuendoes; for, in the end, the medical disability retirement application must contain the facts to persuade, the evidence to establish, and the legal arguments to consider, and in order to do that, one must resist the persistent tinnitus of life.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement Benefits: Threads

They are fragile and subject to being snapped; yet, we rely upon them to hold together the fabric of so many things, both in practical terms and in more nuanced settings of conceptual constructs cloaked in figurative speech.

As in Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, that invisible thread that gently tugs despite isolation, renunciation and attribution of apostasy in the chaos of cultural confusion; or of the woven cloth where thousands in aggregate intersecting patterns creates the strength of multitudes where the single entity would snap upon the breath of a dragon’s snore.  Or, in a conceptual, literary sense, of thoughts and ideas weaving throughout, intersecting and inextricably interconnected with other major themes, of supportive quality and subchapters in reinforcing the main paradigm of a narrative in work.

Threads combine to strengthen; in their singularity, they are the arteries that course through one’s body and give life to an otherwise inert functionality of inoperable means, and allows for its almost invisible presence to dominate beyond its capacity to remain quantitatively anonymous despite its qualitative force of influence.  On a spool, amassed in its collective consolidation, its unique distinctiveness can be identified by color and hue; yet, pull a line of it, perhaps in inches, feet or even a yard, and only by squinting in the full refracted light of day can you discern the difference between that and another.

Thus as we enter into the millennium of future woes do we rely more and more upon the threads that hold up the fragile and ever tenuous spirits of malevolence, like the mistaken times in our own closet when Pandora’s box was unceremoniously allowed to release those skeletons we so deftly hid in the cellars of our private lives.

The threads we have woven, that are the inseparable fabric of our inner lives and outer layers of concealing veils; and yet we take them for granted, no matter the consequences of wrapping dreams and hopes within the fragile confines of the softness wrapped in the baby carriage left teetering on the cliff’s edge.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers considering filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the applicability and relevance of threads is twofold:  First, remember to always weave in a reinforcing manner, the repetitive value of the themes documented involving one’s medical conditions throughout the applicant’s Statement of Disability as reflected on SF 3112A, to reiterate those specific elements of incompatibility between the medical condition and the positional duties; and second, recognize that the figurative threads of life are those that need listening to, as symptoms of health conditions once ignored, now weaving through the very fabric of one’s daily life.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: The clinical language

The antiseptic nature of language allows for the euphemism of linguistic cloaking to occur.  The corollary effect, however, is that it fails to provide a nexus to the humanity lost, and allows for an arrogance of language by imparting its distance and separation from warmth.

Clinical language has that characteristic, steeped in the mysterious and archaic history of Gregorian chants at altars once embodying the Eucharist’s theological secrets of transubstantiation with the priesthood undulating in phrases foreign to ears of modernity; and from that same pocket of incomprehensible linguistic sophistication that only New Englanders like Buckley and other intellectuals would bandy about with phrases we all nod at as if we understood them, comes the cold, clinical language that doctors, nurses and psychiatrists use in diagnosing conditions beyond the mere commoner’s ability to realize.

The clinical language bifurcates and objectifies; it is a way of keeping the discussion on a level of discourse where human emotions need not enter, will not intercede, and cannot invade through the impenetrable walls of the rational side of the brain.  Perhaps there is a need for that; a want, a desire and a worthiness to maintain that distance, so that the topics delineated, explained and obfuscated can be accomplished without the emotional turmoil of those consequences resulting from the realization that one is damaged goods beyond repair.

In the end, however, when the patient goes back home, discusses it with family, friends and close relations, the interpretive process must by necessity be utilized.

In former times, dictionaries were taken out, root words were defined and the Latin phrases whispered in secret murmurings of incantations incomprehensible were untangled, discerned and disassembled.  In modernity, we Google them and have the algorithm of computer intelligence in sunny California interpret the words for us to digest.  Then, the translation into the emotive language of kitchen-held talks in hushed tones where children strain to listen from stairwells around the corner; and tears wept, confidences given and lost, and the upheavals of families in crisis where the clinical language has been demythologized and demystified so that even the everyday person can recognize the human toil of a ravaged body and mind.

For the Federal employee and U.S. Postal worker who suffers from a medical condition, whether that medical condition has been diagnosed in clothing termed by the clinical language used by the medical profession, or already interpreted in common everyday usage, the plan is to prepare an effective, understandable, cogent and coherent Federal Disability Retirement application, and one that can bridge that gap from phrases barely comprehensible to linguistic descriptions that present a viable case.

Doctor’s reports and office notes, clinical narratives and treatment records are all useful and necessary, but in order to create that legal nexus of presenting a persuasive argument and meeting the standard of proof of preponderance of the evidence in a Federal Disability Retirement application, it is always a good idea to interpret and translate that clinical language into a delineation that touches upon the everyday emotions common to us all, by breaking down the bifurcated walls and allowing for the warmth of humanity to pervade the narrative of life.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: The immovable individual

Aristotle’s unmoved mover is an interesting conceptual posit:  it is based upon the cohesive compromise between the Pre-Socratics as paradigmatic examples encapsulated by Parmenides and Heraclitus – of the universe as seen in a singular “oneness” as opposed to embroiled in constant flux and change.

The unmoved mover consolidates into a synergistic compromise the pendulum between the two extremes:  Here is the apex of perfection representing unchangeableness, surrounded by the universe of flux and constant metamorphosis striving towards that paradigm of perfection; and so the world of alteration and the oneness of the infinite are balanced in a yin-yang of a complete whole.

Within this universe of the immovable and inconstancy reflects the types of individuals roaming the world – of the indecisive and hollow man without a moral compass, to the principled and uncompromising stalwart whom some would characterize as narrow-minded and radical in holding extremist views unshaken by cultural alterations and daily vicissitudes of undermined normative paradigms.

But history portends of change, and it is the mounds of human detritus that combine to reveal that flux is the foundation of successful adaptation for survival in Nature, as well as in human society – of business models that must follow the trends of cultural metamorphosis, to the embracing of a changing society and structures of sociological tremors throughout.  Yes, having principles to abide by is important; but Man is neither perfect like the Unmoved Mover, nor touching upon the residue of angels and gods who pride in the near-perfection of heavenly bodies.

The immovable individual – while principled and relied upon for foundational support – is often the one left behind because when life clashes with the ivory tower of conceptual constructs, not moving is tantamount to seppuku – the traditional honor-killing by disembowelment by the samurai.

That is often the problem with life, living and beliefs that one clings to; and for the Federal employee and U.S. Postal worker who has a view that one’s Federal or Postal career path must by necessity strive towards the Unmoved Mover, the problem is when a 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 positional duties.

Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers often will continue to work until it is detrimental to his or her own self-interest – i.e., to the cost of one’s health.

Yes, having a paradigm of principled beliefs is important, and yes, living by a moral compass can maintain the important foundation for integrity, loyalty, uprightness and reflecting all that is good in human nature.  But when reality clashes with principle – as when one’s view of working for “the mission of the agency” or for the good of the U.S. Postal Service begins to contradict one’s medical condition, then it is time to consider preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, and not worry too much about being the immovable individual whose paradigm as reflected in how Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover may – while being a stalwart of perfection – be left behind in the dustbin of history’s irrelevant collection of ideas showing the vaunted state of angels no longer believed in, and gods removed because of the errors of myths and fantasies once created to tell the narrative of human folly.

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

 

OPM Disability Retirement for Federal & Postal Employees: Alone

We enter into this impervious universe in such a state.  Yes, yes – there are parents surrounding, love embracing and doctors, nurses and hospital attendants with smiling faces and all of that; but being alone is conceptually distinct from loneliness, and one can be surrounded by a multitude of social acquaintances, family members and close and distant relatives, and still bear the weight of the latter, and yet know throughout that one is nevertheless alone in this world.

One realizes and comprehends that proverbial synergism of that special  “soul-mate” – that special person that the angels sprinkled with the magic of being in a parallel universe of identical comity; or of those special twins who possess an unmatched oneness beyond rational explanation; but, besides such special circumstances and almost mystical exceptions, most of us are alone in this world.

Aloneness goes beyond the human activity of busy-ness; beyond family gatherings and social upheavals of friendships, conflicts, domestic arguments where heartbreaks cutting to the essence of a soul is preferable to sitting in the darkness at the end of the day in a rhythmic rocking chair squeaking away the unscratched surface of a cold marble floor.

We arrive in this world alone; travel through it with companions rarely and barely recognizable; and become decrepit with medical conditions in some unvisited corner of antiseptic-smelling hospital wards where visiting hours are never breached because loneliness knows not the ticking of a clock where blank stares of aged men and women embrace vacantly the timelessness of human frailty.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers whose careers may need to be cut short because of a medical condition, you know well the concept of being alone:  of a Federal Agency that sees you merely as a fungible component that needs to be quickly replaced and filled; of a Postal worker whose decades of allegiance and loyalty are disregarded because of an injury, a debilitating medical condition or a chronic and progressively deteriorating illness.

Preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application will not necessarily abate the sense of being alone, but it will provide a pathway of attempting to reach a plateau in life where the future becomes somewhat more stable, the present becomes clearer and focused with greater definition, and that impervious universe from whence we arrived may somehow provide a heightened sense of worth, and loneliness is disconnected from the reality of being alone.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Disability Retirement for Federal Employees: Tomorrow’s project delayed

We tend to delay that which we know is best for us, and embrace the moment for which we pay a dear price.  Man was created to engage projects; a purpose for life, a value for living, a reason to live.  Why it is important to initiate, continue, accomplish and involve, are considerable in quantity:  to make a living; to be compensated for work employed; to create and construct for the betterment of community and the greater world; and not merely because Heidegger posits that it is to avoid our mortality and the inevitability of our fate.

It is a worthwhile endeavor, and not something to be ashamed of.  It is, however, when the focus upon tomorrow’s project becomes all-consuming such that it takes priority over health, family and self-preservation that something becomes dangerously and irrationally askew, then such prioritizing of life’s opportunities is undermined by an obsessive culture of a singular focus towards self-destruction.

Tomorrow’s project may need to be delay, or abandoned altogether.  Whether we make decisions in life by prioritizing through some category of rationality, or life forces such rearrangements by the compelling introduction of sickness, deterioration of health, or a traumatic turn of events, issues delayed or otherwise avoided tend to come back to remind, irritate or others demand.

There is never an end to human projects; if fear of exhausting the human capacity to devise is ever questioned, such a query is akin to puzzlement of philosophical questions consistent throughout Western history – each generation revives the conundrums of the past precisely because that is what it means to be human.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers, there is no difference in kind or type; like all other workers and bee-like busy-ness in this universe of activity, the list of “tomorrow’s” projects is long and often left to a haphazard delineation not intended to be categorized in any rational priority of accomplishments.

Events, however, tend to force things upon us otherwise left unattended, and preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is often one of those “tomorrow” projects cast aside to be delayed – until that life event compels action.  Perhaps the delay is rationally-based; perhaps it is a procrastination of necessity; or, more likely, a necessity that is avoided like the plague of yesterday until the symptoms of decay and destruction compel the magnification to the forefront of our lives.

Admitting and submitting to an inevitable concern previously left for tomorrow is never a pleasant concession, but at some point, tomorrow’s project delayed – especially the necessity to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management – may become today’s necessary action required immediately; and, in that event, it may be wise to seek the counsel of a lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement law.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire
OPM Disability Retirement Lawyer

Medical Retirement from Civil Service: The Clock

It is an interesting device.  We can try and project back to a time of its non-existence, or at least when not every household owned one.  What could it have been like?  Where the hour was guessed at by the position of the sun – or was that not even part of the thought process?  Did the sun, dawn, dusk and twilight merely present a foreboding for a different paradigm?

Certainly, minutes and seconds likely had conceptual meaninglessness, and everyone worked, played and lived for the “moment”, without great regard or concern for the next day, the following season, or a decade hence.  Ship’s captains had a greater sense of future foreboding, though not necessarily of time, but of oncoming storms or changes in the currents; farmers lived season to season, and fretted as they still do about droughts or floods that might destroy crops; but as we entered into modernity, it was the grind of the clock that set the day for the city dweller, where payment for labor earned was remitted not by the rising and setting of the sun, but by increments of hours, minutes and labor beyond the darkness of a day ended.

At what point did time entrap us into a thought-process of expectancy that destroys the joy of a living moment?

If Friday provides a needed anticipation for a weekend of rest and repose, we immediately destroy and capacity to enjoy it by looking at the clock and realizing how many hours and minutes have passed by, and further denigrate our ability to appreciate by calculating the remainder of time.  We can become obsessed with the clock – its ticking diminution by projecting the decrease; the foreboding of what is yet to come, though it is merely within our minds; and the constant checking of incremental living of a life as against the clock that rules.

Medical conditions tend to remind us of the clock; or, perhaps it is the opposite, where the clock reminds us of our mortality when we suffer from a medical condition.  For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that preparing a Federal Disability Retirement application may become a necessity, the clock can serve as both a reminder as well as an obsession of foreboding thought processes.

Yes, the clock is likely ticking in a proverbial sense in terms of the Agency or the U.S. Postal Service having the patience (does such an animal exist for either?) in trying to “work with” the medical condition (a euphemism often interpreted as, “You better become fully productive soon, or else”), but in a more real sense, the Federal or Postal employee must make a decision at some point as to the prioritizing of one’s health as opposed to the positional elements of the job which is increasingly becoming more and more difficult to fulfill.

By law, the Federal or Postal employee who is released, separated or terminated (yes, there is a distinction between the three, but for the Federal employee of Postal worker, not enough of significance to define them here), the Federal or Postal employee can file for Federal Disability Retirement within one (1) year of such separation from service.  Certainly, in that instance, the clock begins to tick, and not just in a proverbial sense but in real legal terms.  One need not, however, wait for such an event to realize the clock’s significance; watching the clock as the medical condition continues to deteriorate, is reminder enough that time rules us each day whether or not we succumb to it, or not.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire