Federal Disability Retirement: Annoyance or Irritant

They are both nouns, but the difference is one of perspective — of the view or angle from which it is felt, experienced, encountered or received.

To that end, it encapsulates the dichotomy between subjective and objective; for, the former normally refers to one’s subjective experience, the state of being or the sensation the “subject” experiences; while the latter refers to a substance — an “object” out there in the world outside of our internal, subjective sensations — which causes discomfort or a phenomena of displeasure.

An irritant may cause an annoyance, and an annoyance can be an irritant, and it is the classic distinction between the “inside” as opposed to the “outside” experience.  We can refer to certain chemicals, cleaning fluids and the like as irritants, but we normally do not declare that they constitute an annoyance; although, the linguistic lines are not so strict as to prevent a person from saying, for example, “That woman’s perfume is somewhat of an annoyance”.

On the other hand, one might refer to someone’s constant manner of clearing his or her throat in mid-sentence as an “annoyance”, but because it does not directly impact one’s own physical well-being, such a quirk is likely not referred to as an “irritant”, although one may use the adjective form of the word and confide that the person’s manner is “irritating”.

In the end, the two words are somewhat similar in meaning but reveal their differences from the aspect of perspective — of whom, or from where.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition where the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the basic elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, it is important to understand and appreciate the distinction which the U.S. Office of Personnel Management often makes between “objective” evidence and “subjective” evidence.

OPM will often twist and misapply the law, and make you think that certain medical evidence deemed “subjective” are like second-class citizens and less than credible, and will insist that only “objective” evidence is acceptable.  Don’t let OPM fool you.

Contact a FERS Disability Lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and let not the ignorance of the law defeat your quest to obtain an approval from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and don’t let the word-games irritate or annoy you.

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: Silence of the Unasked Question

If we don’t ask, we will never know.  Are some questions better left unasked?  In life, is it better to keep your head stuck in the sand and living in ignorance than to know what may come one’s way?  Do we say to the child who is constantly curious, “Shush. Better not to know how things work”?

Fear of the unknown is often the basis of silence; and silence of the unasked question is that pause which reverberates within with trembling hesitation, but where holding one’s breath merely extends the agony of the silence and never resolves the fear.

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 duties, silence often becomes the norm; leaving aside the unasked question is the pathway to comfort, except for the fact that medical conditions never go away.

Contact an OPM Federal Disability Retirement Lawyer and break the silence of the unasked question.  It is a free initial consultation, so what have you got to lose — except to break the silence of the unasked question?

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

FERS Disability Retirement: Stress and the Hectic Life

Most of us have little choice in the matter.  There are, of course, those very few who have the opportunity to control the pace of life — the Royal Family, perhaps, who can have servants and butlers, cooks and maids perform all of the “chores”, allowing for greater leisure time and reflective postures of contemplative living.

Wealth has always been a component of leisure; yet, the self-contradiction is evident all around us: It is the pursuit of wealth which is the obsession of modernity; wealth is allegedly pursued in order to have a life of leisure; and yet the pursuit itself is what creates the hectic life and the stresses we live in.

That is also the advertising gambit, is it not?  Almost every product sells the commodity of the “better life” — that X-product will save you time; Y-product will make you “feel” more peaceful, more powerful, more whatever.  That which we pursue to escape is the very basis of our self-immolation; that is the rule of modernity.

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, filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits may not get rid of — entirely — the stress and the hectic life.  However, as medical conditions are often the greatest stressor in life, to at least alleviate the hectic part of your life by allowing you to retire on disability and give you more time to focus upon your health — well, at least it is a start.

Contact an OPM Disability Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and begin to reduce the stresses in an otherwise hectic life we seem caught up in.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement under FERS: Conflict of Priorities

It happens within friendships, within marriages; within all interactions of relationships, where contending forces of wants, desires, needs and goal-oriented activities intersect between one’s own and those of others.  Whether we can reorder and reorganize our own; to what extent the “other” is willing to subjugate or subordinate theirs in order to compliment your own; these are the filaments which bring about the illumination of a relationship, or leave it behind in the darkness of yesterday’s dreams.

The conflict of priorities is what destroys relationships, splits up marriages and divides friendships.  We often hear the euphemisms of life: “We drifted apart”; “We just didn’t see eye-to-eye on some things”; “We found ourselves arguing more than it was healthy to”, etc.  These are declaratives where conflict of priorities destroyed the friendship of relationships.

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 conflict between taking care of one’s own health and performing at an acceptable level at one’s Federal or Postal job should never be in question.  Health should be priority number 1; all else, secondary.

If Federal Disability Retirement needs to be applied for because priority number 1 (one’s own health) ever comes into question, you should consult with an attorney who specializes in FERS Disability Retirement Law.  For, in the end, a conflict of priorities should never allow for the conflict to question the priority of one’s own health.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement under FERS: The Kettle’s Whistle

Why do we invent such irritating devices?  When the jarring whistle of the kettle’s boil screeches to gain our attention, is it precisely for that reason — in order to remind us that there is water boiling, that a fire or burner is causing it, and that you cannot just leave it like allowing for the needle on a record-player to turn endlessly upon a music-less disc with soft scratches upon a rotation that is going nowhere (ah, those days when music was truly enjoyed!).

Are noises created to always reflect the reality of its source?  Does the sound of the waives match the soft lapping of the ocean’s beauty, just as the raging storm’s fury mirrors the torrent of rain and thunder?  When first a child hears the sound of a distant train, and only later sees the monstrosity that forms the engine and the caboose, does he or she reflect, “Well, that certainly didn’t turn out to be what I thought” —? Similarly, does pain match the warning of a body’s injury?  Does a voice that sounds purring parallel the gruffness of a wrestler’s weight?

If the kettle’s whistle is meant to irritate and to alarm, it is doing its job; and the kettle that fails to so whistle is one that has lost its purpose and utility, even though it still boils as well as the next one purchased in replacement of the one which lost its capacity to irritate.

Medical conditions are like that, as well — of the capacity to alarm, to trigger warnings, to possess a reason thereof.  We resist it; of the voice that says that change needs to be forthcoming.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal employees 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 his or her Federal or Postal job, it may be that the kettle’s whistle is warning of an impending need — of a change.

Getting up, taking the kettle off of the burner and stopping the whistle is akin to preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management under FERS: For, in the end, the kettle’s whistle is merely the warning we needed, prompting us to act when all around us are indicators that what once was can no longer be.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Filing for OPM Disability Retirement: Counting the days

Do we count the days when vacations lapse within the final hours and minutes, when in the beginning sunsets were timeless moments of restful hours yet to come?  What anticipation of worry-less days, and of looking forward to sleeping in, letting one’s guard down and the muscles relaxing from the tensions of anxiety-filled build-ups: No emails (at least for a few days, maybe…until the thought begins to intrude, then grow, then overwhelm, of the accumulation of those hundreds sitting there waiting…waiting…), no phone calls, no need for the greatest necessity in modernity — the ability and capacity to multitask.

The days began with lazy hours and hazy minds; of the sleepiness still caught between eyelids barely opened, and thoughts of the rat-race still barely behind.  It takes days just to unwind, and just when you begin to relax, it dawns on you that you are already counting the days when summer is over, the kids are back to school, and even the commercials on television are already pushing to get those supplies that are blaring with fanfare of sales and super-sales.

Do lions in the wild count the days?  Do the salmon as they fight to go upstream relinquish the solitude of mindless numbers?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, where the medical condition forces one to count not just the days when vacation is at hand, but every hour, every day, every week because survival to the end of the week is the mode of existence, it is time to consider preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

For, in the end, counting the days is nothing but a clear indication that the numbered days are shrinking exponentially, and lost with the sequence of each count is the unalterable truth that days counted are days lost, especially when one’s health is at stake.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Legal Representation on Federal Disability Retirement Claims: Pelagic views

It is a view that few of us ever experience – of the deep part of the oceans where land cannot be seen even on a clear day. Most of us remain near waters adjacent to land or inland waters; and even taking a transatlantic cruise doesn’t quite count, because we remain within sight and sound of a moving community – the ship itself – no matter how much we may lean over the railing to obtain the sensory deviancy from reality.

It is that depth of a perspective that is constantly warping by a myopic view from the “human” perspective; for, we have language, first as a barrier, then thoughts and conceptual constructs that become obstacles that cannot be banished or otherwise decoupled from the moment we are born into this universe.

We can, of course, try and imagine a nakedness of reality separated from the language games and Kantian constructs of imposed categorical imperatives we walk about with, and imagination can take us quite far.  But that “noumenal” reality can never be fully experienced, unless you are born and brought up by the apes like Tarzan of that jungle reality, but even he could not fully divorce his upbringing from the neurological wiring that defined and differentiated him from companions.

It is, instead, a viewpoint and perspective that is unique, rare and inconsistently insightful; those pelagic views open up the universe for us in dark times; in times of turmoil when a sudden expansiveness reveals to us something more than that which we muddle through; and when those “eureka” moments approach a human revelation that sometimes allows for an escape beyond the caverns of a Platonic shadow we become chained to, it is often the oxymoron of reality when the depths of the proverbial despairing allows for an uplifting pelagic view to occur.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are trying to escape from the belittling, demeaning and often cavernous despondency of a chronic medical condition that seems to be inviting constant harassment and targeted administrative sanctions that are becoming increasingly unbearable, including threats, restrictions on leave-taking, and a stranglehold of a PIP that is merely a pretext for firing, beginning the process of preparing 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, may be the best route towards attaining that pelagic view that too often escapes us all.

No, a Federal Disability Retirement annuity is not the gold pot at the end of a rainbow; and, no, OPM Disability Retirement does not give us the liberty as Tarzan in the jungles felt; but like being on a cruise ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean, it approaches the nearest and best next thing to a pelagic view when you pause and consider the alternative – of the increasing choke-hold of the Federal agency or the Postal Service to ignore a medical condition and destroying your health for the sake of paying homage to what they want.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Medical Retirement: Avoiding emotional identification

We all do it, to one extent or another; doctors who deal with terminal children or relegated to the emergency floors; patients who must see the foreboding grief in the eyes of family members who have been told; psychiatrists, psychologists and therapists who listen “objectively” to the turmoil and trauma of other lives; the capacity for human compartmentalism is nearly inexhaustible.

Does the horse who listens to the cab driver in the brilliant short story, “Misery” (or often subtitled as, “Grief” or “To whom shall I tell my grief?”), by Anton Chekhov, have a choice in the matter?  Well, you say, the horse cannot understand the linguistic intricacies of the story told!  And, yet, we designate dogs and other animals as therapeutic breeds capable of soothing the wounded and scarred psyche of our neighbors…  The flip side of such a capacity, of course, leads to human cruelty beyond mere animalistic behavior, where the caverns of barbarism know no bounds.

The murderous son can torture in the name of the State by day, and sit with his mother at the dinner table and weep with genuine sorrow over the arthritic pain felt by infirmity and old age; and the boy who remembers the love of his mother may singe the wings of insects with pyrotechnic delight as mere gaggles of laughter unhinged by a warped conscience.  But, you say, insects and the lower order of animals don’t have “feelings” in the same way we do!  What does that statement truly mean, but merely to justify an act which — if otherwise directed at a fellow human being — would border on the criminal?

Bifurcation of lives lived is an important survival component for the health of the human psyche.  To identify with a suffering soul on an intellectual level allows for comprehension and understanding; to do so on a par at an emotional level merely subsumes one into the other, and negates the capacity to provide wisdom or advice.  That is why, in preparing a Federal Disability Retirement application by a FERS, CSRS or CSRS employee, whether in a Postal capacity or as a non-Postal, Federal employee, it is important to recognize that if a Federal or Postal employee prepares the Statement of Disability on SF 3112A without representation, the subject and object of such preparation are one and the same, and therefore collectively engages in an activity of emotional identification which is difficult to avoid.  For, the person of whom the Statement of Disability is written, is the same person who is the author of the narrative on SF 3112A.

Is there a danger to be avoided?  Isn’t there an advantage in conveying the feelings by the same person who experiences the trauma and medical condition?  If objectivity is defined, in part, at least, as a reasoned perspective from multiple sides of an issue or fact, then the greater distance ensconced between the subject discussed and the narrator empowered, will allow for the attainment of that position of elevated perception.

Certainly, that is how the administrative specialist at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management will be reviewing your case — by avoiding emotional identification, and trying to sort through the pain, suffering and legal implications of the Federal Disability Retirement application, hopefully prepared and formulated in as objective a manner as humanly possible.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Separation and Retirement under FERS: The stick figure across the street

We all drew them.  They are simple figures, one-dimensional, created not only by children and uncreative hands, but by sophisticated artists who convey complexity through their uncomplicated depiction.  Upon such lack of depth, we can project an unending dearth of fillers, precisely because the simple lines invite us to increase the servile skinniness by piling a composite upon the lean figures which are mere caricatures devoid of substance.

The neighbor across the street, whom we have never met, and who is but a figure the size between forefinger and thumb, and remains the remnant of a stick figure, and continues to convey, so; and when the annoying bark of a midnight dog awakens the sensibilities of insomnia and a sleepless night, or of such a thin veil of loss of restorative slumber that wakefulness becomes a better alternative, then we can fill in the gaps of the stick figure, add some meat and substance, with diatribes of invectives piled upon curses and unimaginable energies of words rarely considered and never previously uttered.

Coworkers used to be nothing more than such stick figures — before they earned that status of enamored stature.  That is why leaving a career, cutting short a lifetime of accomplishments, and turning away from the vindictive familiarity of a workplace once loved, is so difficult for the Federal or Postal Service employee.

Once upon a time, the stick figures were mere appendages and afterthoughts in the life of the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker; but over time, they gained substance, girth, and an unmerited significance merely by osmosis of daily encounters.

Thus, when a medical condition hits the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker with a force of plenitude such that filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management must be considered, it is not just the separation from mere commerce and economic entanglement which must be considered, but rather, extrication from a social network of figures who have evolved, over many years and sometimes multiple decades, into caricatures amassing and aggregating personalities, comradeship, shared sense of missions accomplished, and much more.

So long as they had remained mere stick figures from across the street, the distance of time, the separation of dimensions, and the wall of strangeness allowed for an ease of abandonment.

For the Federal or Postal employee who must consider preparing, formulating and filing an effective FERS Disability Retirement application through OPM, however, the process is no longer merely a wave of goodbye to the stick figure across the street; no, instead, that has become the unwanted uncle who has no other home to go to, and must by obligation be evicted despite the relationship which has developed beyond the formless caricature painted upon our own minds.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Medical Retirement: Dickens, Salinger & Capote

It is always dangerous to offer an overview of complexity; simplicity of explanation often teeters upon the precipice of superficiality, and when it comes to the psychology of people, we normally get it wrong.  Yet, we can try.

For Dickens, the childhood experiences of destitution and humble beginnings allowed for a magnification of love for humanity borne of cruelty in childhood.  In Salinger, we see the pent-up destruction of a young man whose anguish was molded through sights, sounds and experiences devastated by war.  And of Capote, we glean the lasting scars of rejection, first with minor cuts and burns by the divorce of his parents, then deeper in being bounced about by relatives, only to stab him with disappointment when his childhood friend, Harper Lee, received the accolades and universal love he sought so passionately, needed beyond all others, but never felt but for the loss of that which he could not embrace.

The life experiences each encountered reflected, in the end, upon the exhibition of an inner soul:  Dickens continued to provide the public with readings of characters forever loved, and embraced the sea of admiration which was the source of his limitless imaginations, borne of a world which tried to contain him with a system of caste and class.

Salinger retreated more and more into the insular world of his own safe web of privacy and secrecy, having concluded that the world was not to be trusted, that phoniness lurked in every man’s soul, and the horrors witnessed at the hands of war and concentration camps were evidence enough to deny others anything remaining.

And for Capote — we may sum it up in the cruel but crisp truism upon his death, by fellow author Gore Vidal, who quipped that it was a “good career move”.  Acting ever the fool with drunkenness and debauchery, the public destruction of a talent so extraordinary was a painful sight to witness.

Can we learn anything from these paragons of talent?  Or, are such characters merely of our own creations, snickering at the fact that, even where seemingly boundless talent exists and opportunities reflect limitless choices, self-destruction nevertheless becomes the teleology of choice.  At a minimum, they reveal to us the complexity of human essence, and that what people react to on the outside barely scratches the surface of what remains within.

And this is the same for Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are harassed and intimidated in the workplace, when a medical condition results in the necessity to prepare, formulate and 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.  For, the coworkers, managers and supervisors who treat the Federal or Postal worker as nothing more than a nuisance through loss of productivity, fails to address the core value of the individual suffering at the hands of consequences not chosen through self-destructive behavior, but merely because of fate of circumstances.

The key for the Federal and Postal worker both, is to choose a path which refuses to submit to self-immolation resulting from the negative experiences at the hands of others; rather, to embrace the love of others as Dickens did, and not retreat into the insular retardation of life as Salinger proposed, or the reverberating echoes made by the empty bottle of alcohol, drowning in later life as Capote consumed, shuddering with the laughter of others and snickering for want of fools in his diminishing stature, ever losing the love which he sought so selfishly.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire