FERS Disability Retirement Benefits: Drifting

We all do it; or, more likely, it merely happens to us.  The importance is not so much whether we are, but whether it is towards something, or away.  If it is drifting away, without a direction towards something, then there is the danger of isolation, desolation and despair.  If it is being adrift — but with some direction and ultimately “towards” some direction or goal — then it is a positive thing, and not merely a negation and a chasm leading to nothingness.

We cannot — all of us, every waking moment and every minute of our lives — be purposeful, goal-oriented, and with certainty of hope.  If we were, we would merely be angels and divine agents, and not the fallible human beings we are meant to be.  Don’t be so hard on yourself; for, drifting is part of life’s meanderings, and there is nothing wrong with being lost every now and again, especially when such drifting may lead us to encounters more fruitful than merely existing as the busy little beavers we are always asked to be.

When drifting is a merely an interim period, a temporary state, then it is merely a “stage before” and will likely lead to something positive.

For Federal employees, of course, as well as U.S. Postal workers (both of whom fall into the category of FERS employees) who suffer from a medical condition where the medical condition leads one adrift, consider contacting a FERS Disability Attorney when you are ready, in order to guide and direct you in the right direction, in preparing, formulating and filing an effective FERS Disability Retirement application through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management under FERS.

Drifting is good; purpose is even better; and when the drifting is over, it is a good thing to redirect your goals and obtain a Federal Disability Retirement annuity in order to redirect your priorities so that your health becomes the end-goal in the drifting period of your life.

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 Medical Retirement Benefits: Hope Springs Eternal

It is a phrase which quickly became proverbial; from the poem, “An Essay on Man” by Alexander Pope, it reflects upon both the need for it and the inherent state of man’s being.  In the face of trying circumstances, it is often the only thing that an individual can cling to; for, without it, the insignificance of one’s existence becomes a poison which shrivels and destroys.

“Hope” is not merely a catch-phrase or an “Atta-boy” pablum of empty condescension; rather, it is the basis for which existence can thrive.  There is a distinction between existing and living; the former has abandoned hope; the latter embraces it.

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, being forced to continue working in an environment where daily struggle and failure becomes a pattern of expectation will only lead to greater misery and depression.

Consult with a Federal Disability Retirement Lawyer and consider the option of a FERS Disability Retirement.  It may be the best course of action where hope yet springs eternal.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Attorney 
FERS Disability Retirement Attorney

 

FERS Medical Retirement: Trouble in Paradise

The initial question in modernity is, of course, whether such a place exists.  Paradise was always a fantasy which everyone dreamed about; the reality of a dystopian universe is what most of us experience on a daily basis.  Paradise Lost — of a time forgotten, of an Eden which once existed but was forsaken because of greed, corruption and human frailty; these, we all learned about as children and have built callouses against because of our experiences with the real world.

Paradise may exist in some form of a transcendent universe, but as a pastor once wisely observed, “Where there are people, there are problems”.  Of course, once trouble arises in paradise, it negates the definitional basis of what constitutes “paradise” in the first place and determines the reality of what we experience daily: Of a universe filled with contentiousness and conflict; of motives questioned, behaviors in frictional constancy and of organisms persistently at war.

Federal Agencies and the Postal Service are no different, in this respect, for they represent an aggregation of a macrocosmic representation of individual lives.

When a Federal or Postal employee begins to suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition begins to prevent the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, two things begin to occur: First, there is “trouble” in the paradise of one’s personhood — whether of the body or of the mind — because of the overwhelming nature of the medical condition itself.  And second: the “trouble” begins to extend to the organism called the “Federal Agency” or the “Postal Service” — in the form of harassment and conflict.

If these two elements have begun to shake the foundations of your paradise, then it is time to consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.  Consult with an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and begin the process of regaining that paradise which you once had, but now have lost.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement for Federal & Postal Employees: That Lost Innocence

Can innocence lost ever be regained?  We often reminisce and shake our heads with wonder — what a naive, innocent young person we once were.  Do we yearn for that time of innocence?  Or, do we shake our heads at the stupidity we once exhibited and scurry away out of embarrassment?

With the present knowledge of cynicism and the current state of wisdom gained over these years, do we wish that we could recapture those day of youthful folly and have the chance to do it “all over again”?

If we could go back in time, would we take advantage of others with the knowledge we have today, applied in a context of prior innocence where others around us were also unaware and unsophisticated? Would we live our lives differently, knowing that today’s regrets were yesterday’s lack of understanding?  Is it true what the grumpy old man on the porch said in the perennially-watched movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life” — that “Youth is wasted on the young” (or was it George Bernard Shaw who first uttered those words?)?

What would we do differently with present wisdom applied to past circumstances?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition no longer allows for the Federal worker or Postal employee to perform all of the essential elements of his or her Federal job, the opportunity to regain that lost innocence may be forever foreclosed.  You know — that time when work was a breeze and daily challenges were met with aplomb.

Federal Disability Retirement is a benefit that needs to be considered when that time past where innocence lost can no longer be regained and has now become a reality where the Federal Agency or the Postal Service cannot or is unwilling to accommodate the medical condition which remains unresolved.

Consult with a FERS Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, lest the innocence lost becomes a greater loss by adverse actions initiated by a Federal Agency or the Postal Service who takes advantage of the lost innocence that is now nowhere to be seen or found.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement under FERS & CSRS: The distant bark

A lone dog barks in the distance.  We cannot determine where, or even from what direction, but the echo of wailing, sometimes of whimpering, reverberates like a mist in the early morning that quietly pervades but can never be grasped.  Perhaps it persists, and we leave the safety of our own home in search of the cry, as the forlorn sounds made wavers between a spectrum of hurt, pain, loneliness or urgency of need; no matter the reason, the bark is desperate.

We begin the journey in one direction, but suddenly the winds of voices heard shifts, and we believe it may be coming from a completely different direction.  We shift course and walk in the exact opposite direction. The barking continues, now with greater tones of reverberating alarm, drifting from over there, somewhere out there, never to be determined.  The barking stops.  You pause, listen; but only the quietude of the midnight air breaks the stillness of the echo that now sounds within one’s imagination.

You begin to doubt yourself; was it my own fears, my own fantasy?  Did the sound ever break upon the dawn of objective reality, or was it something that originated from deep within my own needs and wants?  You go home.  Then, a few minutes later, after turning off the lights and drifting off into the slumber of night’s call, a lone dog barks in the distance.

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 the Federal or Postal job, that Federal or Postal employee is the distant bark, and the help that never arrives reflects the situation that so often describes the events that unfold.  Federal Disability Retirement, as the analogy may be stretched, is the person who reaches out to try and find the source of the barking.  Failing to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits is the metaphor where the searching man and the barking dog never meet.

Federal Disability Retirement is not just another “benefit” or a “give-away”; rather, it is part of the employment package that the Federal or Postal worker signed on to, and once obtained, allows for the Federal or Postal worker who is on disability retirement to pursue other careers and vocations, and more importantly, to focus upon regaining one’s health in the process by being separated from the work that has become problematic in the meantime.

And like the lone dog that barks in the distance, the Federal or Postal employee who fails to take the next step by not preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, will end up like the dog that wails pitifully deep into the recesses of midnight regrets.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Human & humane activity

Does the dropping of the single vowel make a difference?  Should it?  Or, should the very status of being “human” encompass and naturally include being “humane”, as well?  Should they not be synonyms, or even indistinguishable as an amalgamation of vowels and consonants, as opposed to two distinct words, even if one is considered as a mere extension of the other?

For, it is precisely the unique characteristic and capacity of the former to exhibit the latter, and it is the latter which defines the essence of the former; and so, in many respects, they are identical terms, even if the latter contains a total of 6 letters, comprised of 3 consonants and 3 vowels, whereas the former has one less, with 1 more consonant than a vowel, making it into an uneven number of letters as opposed to a balanced equality of 3 to three, and making it into a ratio of 3:2.

Yet, doesn’t the essence of X require the need for an antonym to exist in order for a contrast to magnify the truth of it?  Thus do opposites enhance each other – does “Being” make any sense without “Nothingness?”  Would “happiness” have an existential sense without “sadness”?  In that logical entrapment, doesn’t the essence of being “human” require, by logical necessity and extension, the capacity to act its opposite – of cruelty, inhumanity, genocidal tendencies and masochistic egoism of the highest order?

That is the unfortunate reflection of reality from the refraction of a word; being “human” does not necessarily compute to being “humane”, although its opposite is apparently not true – if one is “humane”, one necessarily posits that the active agent of such empathy, caring and sensitive treatment is that of a “human”, and not some other species of animal that can exhibit such a trait.  But is this true in all cases?  Do we not witness “humane” treatment by others – by dogs, cats and pigs, perhaps?  Or do we attribute other characteristics to explain away such behavior – such as “loyalty”, “habit” or “trained behaviors”?

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, “humane” treatment by other “humans” is often sorely lacking.  What is it about having a medical condition that somehow brings out the worst in others?  Is it a fear that such a condition reflects a future reality that others see and want to avoid, and therefore begin to treat the person who possesses it like a plague of some short?

Agencies are supposed to treat workers with identified medical conditions in a “humane” way and, if they do not, there are laws concerning the requirement to “accommodate” in place; and, if there are no accommodations, then preparing an OPM Disability Retirement application is the next “humane” law that is there for the human being beset with a medical condition.

That is the peculiarity of laws, of course – they are passed by humans with the knowledge that they do not always engage in humane treatment, and that is why laws governing Federal Disability Retirement are there to be applied – for the human who requires being forced to engage in humane treatment of others, precisely because humans have shown a consistency tendency in history to act inhumanely.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire
Postal & Federal Employee Attorney

 

Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: How truly ordinary we are

Every now and again, someone will make that inane statement that seems to fly by in a discourse of overwhelming linguistic overcrowding of so many such pearls of wisdom:  “Oh, we’re all just human.”  Is it a logical tautology in a strict sense?  The “we” referred to is obviously a subject which includes individual human beings; the “human” described and identified, is the same as the “we” previously posited.  So, it is the same as saying:  “Oh, humans are all just human.”

If that were said, instead, would we not turn with a puzzled look of suspicion, as if the statement made was uttered in such a nonsensical term that the meeting of eyes would, or at least should, erupt with uncontrollable laughter like two hyenas cackling at the full moon?  Or, despite the inane nature of meaninglessness, do we all have a shared cultural norm of language, such that we recognize and comprehend such statements?  For, the sentence itself evokes meanings of shared belief: We are all less than perfect; Don’t worry about it, we all do that from time to time; The ordinariness of human frailty allows for each to give another the benefit of the doubt.

It also points to a slightly deeper meaning:  That, in our humanity, how truly ordinary we are.  Yet, isn’t that very ordinariness that which allows for the shared commonality of community?  The fact that we are ordinary is precisely what allows us all to “fit in”, and concurrently, touches upon that darker side of human nature to spur cruelty, arrogance, superiority and disdain.  For, it is the Darwinian predisposition to conquer and defeat, of “showing up” everyone else that we are what we are not created as – being ordinary.

That is why, when a medical condition is revealed, it is the weakness and the vulnerability that suddenly causes others to shy away, to shun, and to harass and prey upon.  Our ordinariness, in combination with the scientifically and anthropologically explained behavior traits of “survival instincts” and aggressive, predatory inclinations, somewhat defines why we are who we are and how, in a society that supposedly advances continually, we still revert back to your roots of caveman-like follies.

Medical conditions depict our ordinariness.  Manifested medical conditions attract the predatory inclinations within, like predisposed genetic and cellular triggers that cannot be stopped.

That is what Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition triggers a need to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, need to understand:  That we our human; our humanness reveals vulnerabilities; that such vulnerabilities will manifest themselves in quite ordinary revelations, including medical conditions; and, once medical conditions are revealed, it will likely trigger aggressive and predatory reactions, and attract those very hominids who, by Darwinian triggers of genetic predispositions, will react in an attempt to rise above our humanity.

Agencies act that way; the U.S. Postal Service certainly treats it employees in that thread of behavioral responsiveness.  For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers, keep in mind that, in filing a Federal Disability Retirement application, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, how truly ordinary we are is merely another way of recognizing that not only are we just human, but we can also reveal that dark side inherent in all in the rise to subvert just how truly ordinary we are, which only further uncovers how truly ordinary they are, as well.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: The anomaly of insularity

Society’s steady progression towards greater insularity has been accepted as a mere inevitability that must be tolerated, resigned to, and ultimately embraced with little resistance and no objectionable diatribes, except by those madmen and social commentators who defy and decry and parade and parody of innovation as the essence of civilization’s manifest destiny, replacing the previous paradigm that engaged in the systematic genocide of the civilizations encompassing the plenitude of American Indians in a past century or so – but let us not digress and focus too much upon such a path (i.e., a small hint:  read the tragic but necessary work recently released, by Peter Cozzens entitled, The Earth is Weeping, if you want to understand the true heritage of our past “westward progress”).

Insularity goes against every grain of Darwinian truths:  Look around you (if you are not already distracted by your own Smartphone, laptop or other electronic device); who among you and surrounding you are looking at a screen of one sort or another?  Are heads pasted between eyes glazed and a few inches or feet beyond, to a fluorescent screen of inestimable attraction?

Concurrently, what is occurring in that “real world” that we so decry – of a reality that includes “others” in true flesh; of nature’s blossoming or closing, depending upon the season we are in; of planetary alignments and weather changes; and, in the end, of actual people reaching out in a world where virtual reality has replaced humanity’s quest for love.

Man has always had a differentiating and unique feature – of the Shakespearean aside in uttering a poetic soliloquy; of reflecting upon inner thoughts and seeing no further beyond than the mind’s eye as one wanders through an impervious universe; of reminiscing about a past already lost, calculating for a future which may never arrive, and foregoing present pleasures for delayed contentment.  But modernity has changed all of that.

The past is no longer relevant as old men and wisdom of what once occurred as generational transfer of lessons learned are shuttled into nursing homes where dementia prevails upon wasting souls; where future predictions of dystopian fantasies dominate through electronic entertainment and virtual realities that have replaced that singular tree that grows in Brooklyn; and how the world of the Internet, Skype, Instagram and Facebook constitute the entirety of one’s insular world.

Yet, insularity has its consequences.  For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers 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 reality of the medical condition still maintains that anomaly of insularity, in that the world of pain, anguish or anxiety-stricken psychiatric conditions reflect back upon the individual suffering, and the “outer” world cares not a twit about the individual circumstances.

But reach out, one must – for, in order to escape that anomaly of insularity, the Federal or Postal employee must step outside of him or herself, and begin to prepare an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, and that is precisely the “key” to breaking that vicious circularity that encompasses and engulfs one in the very anomaly of insularity, within a conundrum of an uncaring universe, amidst a sea of unsympathetic drones within the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire
Postal & Federal Employee Retirement Attorney