OPM Disability Retirement under FERS: Shame

Shame was once thought to be a valuable societal tool.  While not replacing laws, it often preempted the need for legislative enactments passed to curtail certain unwanted behaviors.  A society without shame is one which prompts and necessitates a state of unlimited laws attempting to regulate the population.

For, a society with traditions, including a general consensus regarding long-standing and known actions which have been deemed “shameful”, requires fewer laws, because self-regulation is performed through a community of unspoken and subtle repressions by mere looks, grimaces, and wordless expressions of contempt and condemnation.

Here in America, sometime in the late Sixties and throughout the Seventies, a quiet movement developed, which was anathema to shame.  We decided that the primary goal in raising children was to make sure that each child developed something obscurely indefinable and named it, “Self-Esteem”.  Shame, of course, was considered an emotion which did not help to indoctrinate or inculcate this thing called “self-esteem”, and so a concurrent movement developed: The campaign to stamp out anything and everything which might trigger a child’s having a sense of shame.

As a result, here we are today — everyone is a winner; nobody has more talent than anyone else; we are all the best that we can be; and whether you stink at something, you should still receive some sort of an award.

Yet, despite all of the educational nonsense and malpractice (Note: during the same period, some Harvard educators decided that learning to read by phonetics needed to be replaced by something called a “whole word” approach, until it became apparent that illiteracy became rampant and reading comprehension turned into a joke; but the trend is now being reversed and “phonetics” — a learning approach which worked for hundreds of years — has finally come back!  Another disastrous trend initiated in the Sixties and Seventies) perpetrated upon our kids, somehow, shame still continues to rear its ugly head in various sectors of our society.

At least, that is true of the “older” generation — like Federal and Postal employees under FERS, who try and hide their medical conditions because they feel a sense of shame that they cannot perform at the same level they are used to.

No need to feel such shame.  Go with the flow of the Sixties and Seventies, and contact a FERS Retirement Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and quit being silly — shame is something of the past, never to rear its ugly head, except maybe in unenlightened countries like Japan — a country where accomplishment is still recognized, and no, not everyone gets a prize just for showing up.

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.

 

Federal Disability Retirement Law: The Finish Line

What is there, at that end which you strived so hard to reach?  We often confuse the end-goals and mix up the purposes engaged.  What is the purpose of the finish line?  Is it merely to reach and cross it?  Does a runner engage in the activity merely to cross the finish line, or is there a greater purpose beyond the mere crossing?

Certainly, for an alien from another planet — or even to a child where explanations have not yet been sufficiently comprehensible because of a lack of context and he or she is merely an accidental spectator not yet attuned to the “ways of the world” — watching men and women strain and struggle to reach a white line and collapse upon crossing it, is a specter of strangeness and peculiarity.

Was it for the health benefits of jogging and running?  Was it to win a prize — a ribbon, a trophy, some cash?  Or was it merely for the fun of competition — to train, to discipline, to achieve?  And what of metaphorical finish lines?

The “race of life”, the “marathon to achieve”, etc. — you know, the motivational constructs which allegedly compel us to greater heights of competitive highs.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who retain an image of a “finish line” — of reaching those magical numbers which declare to everyone, “I have made it!” — it may be that other factors intercede, interrupt and prevent you from achieving that goal of being able to cross that proverbial “finish line”.

What would be the point if, upon reaching the finish line, you collapse and die?  Or, end up in a wheelchair, debilitated and unable to enjoy those “golden years”?

People often mix up and confuse the purpose for the goal with the crossing of the finish line itself: Reaching the finish line is not the same as answering the “why” of getting there.  If your health is deteriorating and you are only destroying yourself in the very effort to reach that finish line, it is time to consider preparing, formulating and filing an effective OPM Disability Retirement application under FERS.

And yes, while being on Federal Disability Retirement, those years you are on it count towards your total number of years of Federal Service when it is recalculated at age 62, so that you are essentially building up your retirement systems while being on Federal Disability Retirement.

Contact a FERS Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and consider what the options are so that you don’t confuse and conflate reaching the finish line for the greater purpose of why and how you want to get there.

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 Help: Fear of the Unknown

It is natural to fear that which is not known; for, it is knowledge which makes for comfort, facts that provide the foundation, and recognizable conceptual constructs which ease the conscience.

Swimming in waters previously uninitiated, where murky waters and unknown growths brush against one’s legs; of entering an abandoned home where strange and unfamiliar noises are heard late at night; or of enduring an unending medical condition where the uncertainty of the outcome, an obscured future and the constant symptoms which never seem to abate — yes, it is natural to possess the fear of the unknown.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the known quantity is the very fear of the unknown: What the U.S. Office of Personnel Management will decide; what the future will hold; whether there will be an opportunity for another career despite the medical condition; and many more besides which may not be known now, and may remain unknown for an undetermined time.

Consult with an experienced disability attorney to at least be informed of that which may yet be unknown, but where an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law may unravel some of the mysteries behind FERS Disability Retirement, and shed light upon the darkness comprising the fears underlying the unknown.

Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Lawyer exclusively representing Federal and Postal employees to secure their Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

 

FERS Disability Retirement Benefits: Troubled Life

Is it a redundancy and a tautology to put the two words together?  For, one may assume that every life is “troubled”, and everything in the universe that is troubled involves a “life”.  So, if one concept necessarily entails another, why do we even have to bother to explicitly point out the co-dependent concept?  Thus would one say if you hear the word, “Life”.  Oh, then it must be troubled.  Or, if you heard someone mention that there was “trouble” in such and such a place, you would merely add, “Oh, yes, there must be a live person there, then.”

Of course, one could argue that the reason why we must clarify one concept with another is because (A) A different and separate concept can also be attached to the other word and (B) It is not necessarily so that an if-then conditional exists — meaning thereby that there are, arguably, “untroubled” lives as well, as least for brief moments in the life of an individual.  As one pastor was heard to say long ago, however: “Where there are people, there are problems.”  True enough.

To live a life for any length of time is by necessity to encounter problems and troubles; for, that is the nature of human existence.

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, “trouble” becomes exponentially pronounced because of the impact upon one’s life that a medical condition necessarily brings.

Filing a Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS, of course, can often mitigate the trouble and help one live a life that is less troubled, by allowing the Federal or Postal employee to focus more upon one’s health and less upon the adversarial nature and friction which arises from one’s inability to perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job.

Consult with a Federal Disability Retirement Attorney to discuss the possibility of preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS, and see whether or not “trouble” does not necessarily have to entail “life”.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: Options Unrealized

Is an option an option if it is unrealized?  “Unrealized”, of course, can have 2 different but subtle meanings — of not being known at all or — in a second sense — of known but just not actualized.  If a person is entirely unaware of an alternative course of action or a pathway delving into a different set of circumstances, can those other avenues be considered “options”?

They are, of course, options in a generic sense, but perhaps not yet individualized.  Take the following hypothetical: buried a foot below the ground is a hidden treasure, a trove of gold coins left behind by Spanish conquistadors many centuries before, now covered by layers of sediment and overgrown grass.

A detectorist (yes, from that cult-like following of a 3-series program) who has gone over the same ground multiple times, suddenly receives a positive signal of a potential find; stops, digs, and — becomes rich and famous.  When asked about it, he replies, “I had gone over the same area many times before and knew that something might be there, but didn’t want to realize my option because, to do so would then take the fun out of it.”  Huh?

Now, that person truly had an option — knowledge of a potential treasure and a choice to exercise the option to find it, but refraining from doing so.  Or, by contrast, the first-time detectorist who stumbles upon the same treasure trove at the first opportunity to cover that same ground — he had no “option”, but simply exercised it upon receiving a positive signal from his metal detector.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the options unrealized are often those that have never been told of, announced or even considered — like preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS.

Perhaps your agency or the Postal Service never apprised you of the benefit of Federal Disability Retirement; or, perhaps you were once told but completely forgot.  In either case, the options unrealized are the ones that can do you harm, and it is only if you take the necessary steps to realized the unrealized options that it can do a person any good, and the first step towards realizing an option unrealized is to consult with an Attorney who specializes in that option yet to be realized: FERS Disability Retirement Law.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Disability Retirement for Federal Employees: How words matter

They do, don’t they?  Otherwise, how else to explain the endless plethora in the course of a single day, heard from every corner and source imaginable: The radio; the television; DVD; streaming; other electronic mediums; bystanders; on the telephone; written forms in email, texts, Facebook postings; everywhere, the insular words of a private-public conversation — public because much of it is accessible to everyone, except for those whispered soft nothings in the privacy of bedrooms and lips upon ears, but throughout acted upon “as if” each exchange of communication is between the sender and receiver, the declarative and the reply, the conversationalist and the lecturer; and so the infinite stream of words flow back and forth like the ebb of tides that have washed the shores of this earth from the beginning of time, or so it seems.

But what if actions never follow upon words; do they still matter?  When a person condemns another and shouts out, “He’s just full of it!” — what exactly do we mean?  A person makes a promise; words are spoken; perhaps even a “contract” is written up and entered into.  But then, nothing happens.  No actions are taken; a lawsuit is filed, and more words are entered into the database of the “justice system”; a trial is held, and more words spoken, this time in front of a judge.

At what point did the words originally spoken or written fail to matter, and when did they then again matter?  What is meant by “matter” — is it only in conjunction with actions taken, or do the words themselves, hanging in the suspended universe of the ethereal, have some impact despite no one taking any notice of it?  Is a “vow” or a “promise” something more than mere words?  If a person makes a promise and marries, takes the traditional vows of fidelity and honor, do the words matter, or only by the actions that follow, or both?  And what of the person who says nothing — in past ages, there were men (and women) who had a reputation of “being a man (or woman) of few words” — but always follows through on his or her commitments?  Do the words not spoken matter?

Yes, yes — the linguistic philosopher will observe that the very lack of words was telling all the same, but we are not talking about that — not of silence, but of words spoken, and not of those unspoken.  Thus do we say of the person who keeps his promise — “He is a man (or woman) of his/her word”. But what if he/she breaks every promise spoken, and says upon getting caught, “But I never meant a word of it anyway”?  Does that make a difference?  Or of the boring lecturer who no one listens to, but then when a fire breaks out and a small child yells, “Fire” and everyone listens and exits safely — how did the action following upon the words spoken matter?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition has come to a point where preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, what must always be kept in mind is that the entire administrative process of the bureaucratic methodology of “Federal Disability Retirement” is based entirely upon “words” — of meeting the legal criteria with words; of describing the nexus between the medical condition and one’s positional duties with words; of making persuasive legal arguments with words.

Words matter by being effective, where actions follow upon the singularly unique encounter between the insular world of subjective words and the objective reality of “others” listening, taking it in, then acting upon them — as in granting an approval for a Federal Disability Retirement application upon a submission of a bunch of effective words that comprise a successful Federal Disability Retirement compilation.  That’s when words matter, and the manner in which words are put together.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement under FERS & CSRS: That carefree child

Whatever happened to him or her?  That child who would shrug the shoulders, move on to the next thing and be free of worry or concerns.  “Carefree” is not a synonym for “careless”, or even of “uncaring”; rather, it is the capacity and ability to maneuver throughout this complex universe without allowing for life’s burdens to weigh upon one so heavily that past events prevent future actions of progress and advancement.

That child that is now lost was caring; he or she was also careful in every endeavor, every project and helpful in many ways; yet, that same child was known to be carefree.  Where is that child, now?  What happened such that life interrupted, anxieties developed and stresses multiplied?  Does that same child – now a hunk of an adult sitting in the corner somewhere – stay up at nights worrying about tomorrow, “stressed out” about the next day, paralyzed with panic about the future?

Often, the troubles we face within the confines of our own minds are greater in horror and imagined size, than the reality that is actually to occur.  Depression, anxiety, panic attacks, bipolar spectrums of manic and depressive phases, coupled with suicidal ideations, agoraphobia and other psychiatric diagnoses – these can comprise the lost paths of a child who is no longer carefree, but has grown into adulthood and experiences the commonality of society’s growing problems, exponentially expanded because the rest of society has indeed become uncaring and careless in its treatment of that child who was once carefree.

If that once-carefree child has become a Federal or Postal employee who is suffering now from the cares of the world, and the medical condition no longer allows for the Federal or Postal employee to perform all of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal job, it may be time to consider 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.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits will not be the solution to all of life’s problems, but it can at least begin to pave a path towards “coming home” to a time that we remember, when that carefree child walked about with less of a burden and more of a smile.  Federal Disability Retirement is meant to do that – to allow for the Federal or Postal worker to focus back upon one’s health and well-being and not become burdened with the stresses of work and performance, where love is anything but unconditional and the summer days of tomorrow may still have some warm moments to enjoy.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire
Federal Disability Retirement Lawyer

 

Federal Employee Medical Retirement: Minding the ‘happiness principle’

Is there such a thing?  Certainly, enough authors, gurus and faith-healers have claimed it, packaged it and sold it as a commodity to be prepared, marketed and purchased.  Somehow, we are all gullible enough to believe in it:  Just as sorcerers of old possessed powers beyond human comprehension, so we hold on to the hope that such secrets of soothsayers mixing the concoction in a cauldron of expectations may boil over with fumes and aromas we can smell into oblivion.

That secret incantation; those mysterious sequence of codes (yes, which is why the Da Vinci Code was so popular – until it was made into a movie and the audience realized the farcical nature when bad literature is transformed into an ever worse media script); or perhaps it is a deal of Faustian proportions – of one’s soul for the hidden principle, the fountain of youth, the corridor down timeless ecstasy; instead, of course, in this mass-marketing world of consumer gullibility, we cling to the anticipation – despite all historical evidence to the contrary – that there exists a fortune-teller’s abracadabra comprising a happiness principle.

Principles are the foundational guidance for understanding the causal connections of events that occur in the objective world; first principles, as Aristotle liked to point out, are important in their revelatory powers to comprehend the operational mechanisms of this world of Being.  If you don’t know first principles, or the paradigmatic principles that operate behind the scenes – much like the Wizard behind the curtain —  then you will always only know that it happens, not why it does so.

And so we go through life, walking and wandering the streets, seeing others smiling, laughing and seeming to enjoy life, while we stew in the solitude of our private misery, perhaps outwardly attempting to feign such emotional brightness while inwardly decaying with each day’s tumult of angst and anxiety.

In minding the existence of the ‘happiness principle’, we are everyday falling into the statistical trap of that famous quip attributed to the 19th century Showman, P.T. Barnum, that there’s “a sucker born every minute.”  Even if everyday empirical evidence refutes the existential reality of such a principle, we nevertheless hope against fading hope for such a white knight in shining armor – that armor of protective fallacies based upon a nonexistent principle wrapped in the cloaking of hopes unearned and never to be attained.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are down in the dumps because of a medical condition, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the reality that one’s career may be cut short and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits may be a necessity, must fight against the false hope that a Federal Disability Retirement annuity is the “be-all” and “end-all” of life’s miseries.

Medical conditions may continue to remain chronic; there will likely remain many challenges in the future; but the point of filing for Federal Disability Retirement is to allow for one to attain a plateau of hopefulness where one can make one’s health and well-being a priority, without necessarily minding the ‘happiness principle’ or believing in P.T. Barnum’s secret to success.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement Benefits for Federal Employees: The bugle

Unlike its cousins, it has no valves or pitch-altering devices, but must be modified through the movement of the lips, the extent of breath exhaled and the undulating modifications of combined muscles in the lips, tongue and throat.  Perhaps from the days of riding a horse in the cavalry, where playing an instrument while charging full force ahead on a horse stumbling across rough terrain forced the instrument’s player to modulate through strain of keeping one’s self from falling; in any event, its very lack of complexity belies the simplicity of the bugle, as appearances are indeed deceiving.

Whether playing Taps in that mournful tone, or reveille in that jarring sound as the signal to awaken for morning roll call, or the charge to execute a cavalry or infantry advancement — that frightening sound to Indian tribes signifying the destruction of a culture long awaiting death – its class of variety extends well beyond most choices provided.

Trumpets of all sorts may be included in the family – from Piccolo trumpets, slide trumpets and multiple others from A to G and beyond; but the bugle stands alone in its structural simplicity and reliance upon the creativity of the holder who dares to attempt to master its range of pitches by the vocal creativity and lips pursed in controlled spurts of exhaling the intricacies of man’s attachment to inert objects to fill the air with sounds unnatural but for the beauty of music.

That range of pitches – from the morning call to awaken with energy reverberating from a cadence of jolting magnitude; to the charging rampage of a galloping horse; to the sorrowful tears of life’s end represented by the draping of a flag upon the coffin; these, in their collective entirety, depict the spectrum of life:  Of youthful exuberance; to middle-aged hope and faith; to the black veil of a life well lived; the sound of the bugle encompasses all.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who find themselves in that twilight of life’s stages – somewhere beyond the youthful enthusiasm, but well before the illumination reflected by the funeral pyre – perhaps it is the sound of the bugle in the last stages of reveille, before the first note of Taps is emitted; and the medical condition has blanketed the tone, quality and loudness of the music of life, and a further stanza of a narrative interrupted must be composed.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is like the bugler’s call to order, and sometimes the sound of music must be heard at the end of a piece, and a pause must be endured, before the beginning of the next.  That is the challenge and the beauty of the bugle – an instrument for all stages in the pendulum of life’s musical quality.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Those spaces in between

Between each word; separating being from nothingness; that which allows for something is contingent upon the void that distinguishes, and without the lack there can be no substance.  Time doesn’t exist without space for movement of bodies of mass; such stillness echoes the lack of reverberating sounds, where waves bounce from one object to the next, and where Oneness of universe means that the clock no longer matters.  Of life, we imagine the same: there are interludes, but we tend to skip the pain and sorrow between the covers of hidden privacy.

Thus do we abide by the antiseptic, sterilized version of our scripted thoughts within ourselves:  birth; a relatively uneventful childhood; completion of educational goals; a career; retirement; and, despite a last gasp in attempting to defy the rules of mortality, death and a funeral projected where weeping and wailing echoes through the indignities of relatives uncaring during the days of living, with sweet revenge of the last laugh leaving behind the mystery of the beyond.

But what of those spaces in between?

Of chronic medical conditions; of pain beyond mere superficial groans; of hospitalizations, having tubes inserted into every imaginable orifice and pricked, prodded and pummeled with tests and artificial means for purposes of extending breath, heartbeat and pulse.

Only in recent times have we breached the decorum of unspoken sensitivities, and allowed for scenes in movies to reveal private functions behind bathroom doors beyond brushing one’s teeth or combing the hair over that bald spot – not that the audience necessarily needs to view such scenes, but somehow, such depictions apparently manifest the avant-garde in each of us and reveals the sophistication we all sought, like days of old when smoking cigarettes with those ridiculously long-looking holders was the trend to follow, merely because someone else did it, and we were told that such was the fashion of the day and represented the height of elegance in posture.

It is, at least in movies, those spaces in between that the characters presumably go to the bathroom, end up in the hospital and suffer in quiet agony; we just don’t see much, or any, of it, except in recent times.  And so we are filling those spaces in between; not merely with more punctuations, or hyphenations unnecessary but to bridge the gap between words and concepts, but in real life as well, by recognizing that life rarely follows a clean sequence of uninterrupted successions of advancement and teleological awareness, but often has detours, hiccups and sometimes valleys beyond which no one else would want to venture.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are considering filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, those spaces in between are already known and recognized.  For, the medical condition itself constitutes the empty pauses between many of life’s successes, and the challenges faced in deciding to end a career otherwise fruitful and productive, to be now replaced with a fight against the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to force them to acknowledge eligibility and entitlement to Federal Disability Retirement benefits, is itself the “filling in” of those very spaces we all must face, in between.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire