OPM Disability Retirement Lawyer: Life’s Dispensation

It is often a word which is accompanied with the adjective, “special“, as in “special dispensation”; but a close review of such a phrase would reveal the redundancy of placing the two words together.  For, to have a dispensation is to be offered a unique situation where one is already exempted from the usual and customary rules applicable; and to insert the adjective, “special’, adds little to the exclusionary nature of the occasion.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, and where the medical condition is beginning to impact one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties occupied in the Federal sector and U.S. Postal Service, it is the disability and medical condition itself which gives rise to the dispensation requested, demanded or otherwise warranted.

That is precisely why resentment, hostility and exclusion occurs as a reactionary response by the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service: because special treatment outside of the normal rules of employment tend to engender such negative responses.

Filing for FMLA; requesting an accommodation in order to continue working; becoming entangled in EEO Complaints, grievances and the like — they all set you apart, and require actions outside of the normative parameters of daily relationships within the employment sector.  And that ultimate reaction by the agency, of “sticking it to the guy” even when it involves a medical condition impacting one’s employment and livelihood — one wonders, how can others be so cruel?  It is justified precisely through the psychology of the “herd mentality“, reduced to its most natural form in a single question:  “Who does that guy think he is?”

For Federal and Postal employees, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, it often becomes necessary to follow up with the ultimate dispensation of that which one’s employment offers — that of filing for Federal Disability Retirement through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

It is not always the case that an employment package offers an annuity which (A) provides for continuation of insurance benefits and (B) allows one to work in a different vocation while receiving the annuity; but Federal Disability Retirement allows for both, so when the situation arises and there is a dispensation which reveals a solution to a problem, it is indeed a special circumstance which should be recognized as such, while ignoring the redundancy of life’s tautology.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement from the U.S. Postal Service and other Federal Agencies: The State of Solitude

Having a medical condition necessarily results in a state of solitude.  While others can empathize, no one else can fully comprehend the totality of the experiential turmoil and trauma, the emotional, physical and psychological toll upon the diminished personhood and the daily struggle endured.  It is a solitary state of existence, and all the more so when individuals, agencies, friends, family and acquaintances fail to take the time to understand.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must, on top of the medical condition itself and the residual impact and consequential symptomatologies which pervade and cling, like dust mites slowly feeding upon the progressive trail of human deterioration, continue to contend with the exacerbating and exasperating reaction of one’s own agency, supervisors, managers and coworkers who engage in daily pettifoggery of irritating acts of hostility and unpleasantness, the dual contention of dealing with the medical condition while concurrently responding to adverse actions by the agency or the Postal Service, only serves to exponentially increase the tension and turmoil.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset is not (and should not be) an issue of surrendering to the slings and arrows of the agency or the U.S. Postal Service; rather, it is a recognition and acknowledgement as to the greater priorities of one’s life:  to continue with an agency or organization that clearly no longer wants or needs you, and thereby complicate properly and adequately attending to the medical condition itself; or to affirmatively choose to forego the unnecessary stresses of an increasingly hostile work environment, and to take the required steps to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, eligibility for medical retirement through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

There again, such a decision must be made within the contextual state of solitude; for, in the end, it is only the person experiencing the trauma of the medical condition who understands the need to lessen the solicitous state of existence, in order to escape the solitude of a soul’s anguish.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement Lawyer: The Wear of Medical Conditions

Some words have constrained, limiting and restricted meanings, available only in esoteric whispers of academic thunderings; others, of common and every day usage, but through monotony of repetition and sheer ordinariness, loses any luster of royal patronage; and yet others, because of the expansive and varied contextual applications, can be applicable afresh, when needs require service of exposure.

One can “wear” clothing; “wear” glasses or a smile; or pass the time tediously, as in, “The minutes wore onward with a tired sense of sadness”.  The word applies also when a person or object begins to diminish, to fatigue, or to slowly fade.  Medical conditions tend to do that, like worn furniture in a house dilapidated by time, where the tiredness of untempered souls and toils of life’s encounters begin to tear at the timeless tokens of tapestries, and one begins to give in to fatefulness.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who wear the face of normalcy, but who must contend not only with an underlying medical condition, as well as the hostility of a workplace and a world which grants no empathy, filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is often seen as a surrender of sorts, a wearing of the proverbial white flag, and an admission and acknowledgment that time has worn the welcome of a bright future.

The wear of medical conditions indeed warrants a respite from the world of turmoil, and a more positive outlook is to simply grant the world its due, and instead to realize that filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits is merely to access an employment benefit which is merely part of the larger employment compensation package signed on to at the beginning of one’s Federal or Postal career, and in accessing the benefit, as nothing more than to assert what is available.

To contend with the wear of a medical condition is a weary challenge; to wear one’s welcome is to withstand unnecessarily.  Wisdom is to recognize one’s time and to wear the wisdom of time when welcomes wither.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

OPM Disability Retirement Attorney: The Aftermath

We like to think in linear prose; that is why, when E. E. Cummings showered the literary world with typographical disarray, a collective groan of discomfort visibly shook the foundations of the art form.

In daily life, it is the capacity of seeing a beginning, continuum and conclusion to a segment of a bifurcated visual horizon, which makes for sanity.  Closure and a sense of termination allows for satisfaction of an accomplished deed.  To be required to maintain a project, a task, an obligation, etc., is to engage in an eternal hell of unendurable agony; but that is, in the end, what must be done for most things, which is precisely why life is a challenge of inestimable proportions.

Federal Disability Retirement is no different; once obtained, one would like to think that closure has been accomplished, and that life is nothing more than forward-looking deeds to be reached like ski slopes allowing only for downward spirals of travel, never needing to look back.  But maintenance of effort is always a requirement; making sure that one is preserving the rights which one has fought so hard to gain, is a daily task, a present obligation, and a necessity of life in Federal Disability Retirement law, as in other sectors of life.

Whether to recognize the earned income cap for Federal Disability Retirement annuitants while still under a certain age, or making sure to be able to re-certify one’s ongoing medical condition and disability — these are never tremendously onerous tasks, but ones which can only be satisfied if one is fully aware of the laws which govern them.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits by the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal worker, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is the first step in securing one’s future; the aftermath is the second and many subsequent steps, in ensuring the viability of that which one fought for in the first place, lest history should be repeated and goblins be allowed a resting place where none should be.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Self-predication

Some people are uncomfortable in doing it; others relish the repetitive self-reference, enjoying the first-person attribution and the incessant pronouncement of the personal pronoun, the centrality of dramatic characterization every time the “I” is inserted; throughout, everyone recognizes that the identification of the “I” can never be fully expunged despite a heightened level of modesty or humility.

There is an artfulness to speaking about one’s self while at the same time making it appear as an objectification of the referential focus.  Talking about oneself; constantly inserting the self-attribution throughout a narrative; dominating every element of a conversation with self referential accolades; these can all be overwhelming, leaving aside the issue of being irritating.  But in some circumstances, such self attribution cannot be avoided.  There are times when we must talk about ourselves, but the manner of how it is done can be the difference between repetitive boredom and referential relevance.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must 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, the requirement to prepare, formulate and file one’s Statement of Disability on Standard Form 3112A is something which must accompany every Federal Disability Retirement application. That is where one tells one’s “story” about the medical condition, the impact upon the ability to perform the essential elements of one’s positional duties, and upon other and personal aspects of living.  Of course, self-reference and attribution of the personal pronoun must be used; but it is also a time and place where a prevailing sense of objectivity should be garnered, and where peripheral irrelevancies should be strictly limited and contained.

Concise brevity should guide one; reference to outside sources and medical evidence should be encapsulated; the story of centrality should be about the impact upon the personal “I”; and yet, throughout, the truth of the narrative should come out such that self-predication does not constitute self-promotion with an ulterior motive, but rather, that the universe of living beings has for a brief moment in time, allowed the spotlight of significance upon a singular entity who has dedicated him/herself to the mission of an agency, but where unforeseen circumstances of life beyond one’s control has necessitated the preparation, formulation and filing of a Federal Disability Retirement application.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: Life’s Satire

There is a subtle distinction between satire and comedy; as the latter is intended directly to evoke laughter, in whatever manner possible (though, of course, there are comedies which provoke guffaws of loud, unconstrained and boisterous mirth, as opposed to the delicious chuckle, and a spectrum of multiple layers in between), the former can be dead serious, in leveling commentaries and sharp criticism upon political or social misfortunes.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have contended with the bureaucracy of their own agency, filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management can be more akin to a satire, than a comedic episode of a tumultuous interlude.  Medical conditions are no laughing matter; but the process of coming to the realization that one’s own agency or the U.S. Postal Service will not do anything to accommodate one’s medical condition, despite a history of years and decades of dedicated service, is but a satire of sorts.

Then, the administrative headaches inherent in filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether one is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is like a running commentary upon the satirical process which began when first we became a Federal or Postal worker.

Viewing a satire while seated as an observing audience, can be a pleasant experience. Identifying one’s self as one of the actors in the play, is what is most disturbing. But when the Federal or Postal employee who is filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, becomes both the spectator as well as the player, the scene itself takes on aspects of another turn: for, as dreams allow for the dreamer to sometimes recognize that one is dreaming, so the elevation of a dream into a nightmare can be identified as short-lived and merely to be endured until one is awakened from the slumber of a tragedy, yet unfolding, still to be determined as to the outcome of the satire of life.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement Legal Representation: Laconic Latitudes

Brevity of words often reveals otherwise unnoticed characteristics through silence; being concise, while important in conveying specific information, can interrupt the natural flow of linguistic rhythms; and, as with music, it is the silence and the pause between notes which create for the beauty of a piece.

In preparing an effective narrative, the essayist, the novelist or the biographer must set a tone in order to draw the reader into the web of verbiage, and like the opening to a secret entranceway leading to the cavernous dark of insular worlds, a light must shine in order to invite the way in. But if the traveler is mired in confusion, how can the journey into a pathless narrative allow for any sense, logic or directed discourse? Even Science Fiction and Fantasy genres must have some relational connection to the world we know; otherwise, it is merely relegated to the private musings of insanity extricated.

The laconic dialogue often requires greater concentration, precisely for the lack of words, where silence and large tracts of pauses mandate implications and inferences.

Federal and Postal employees who suffer from a medical condition are often mired in the confusion of the process of seeking security and a pathway for their future.  In the midst of such confusion, they are asked to fully comprehend the entirety of the administrative process recognized as “Federal Disability Retirement“. To prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application is to have foresight, mental acuity, intellectual capacity and physical stamina to embrace a complex bureaucratic process, and all the while deal with major medical problems.

It would thus be understandable if a laconic Federal Disability Retirement application was prepared; but unfortunately, from the perspective of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (which is the singular agency which makes a determination on all Federal Disability Retirement applications), rarely are pauses and silences taken into account.

While there is always some latitude in reviewing an OPM Disability Retirement application, regardless of whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS-Offset, the time for brevity and implied latitude should be replaced by concise verbosity of a longitudinal perspective.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire