OPM Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: Lachrymose

The word for the day — “of or given to weeping”, as in, “A lachrymose temperament”, or a “lachrymose story about orphan children in Eastern Europe.”

Its opposite, of course, is what is more of the case — of stoicism and keeping that upper lip stiff; for, the antonym of life is comprised of being uncomfortable with revealing too much empathy, lest the tears shed would open up vulnerabilities likely taken advantage of.

The synonym of life is the danger of becoming too maudlin; and the worst of all combinations would thus be: “A person with a lachrymose temperament given to maudlin reactions”.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition where the medical condition begins to impact the Federal or Postal employee’s ability and capacity to perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, there may in fact come a point where one’s lachrymose circumstances require the next step beyond merely trying the hide the medical condition from your supervisors and coworkers.

Filing a Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS is not an admission that one has been defeated by a lachrymose attitude; rather, it is the realization that an incompatibility exists between one’s chronic medical condition and the type of job you are required to perform.

Contact a retirement attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and begin the process of countering the lack of empathy manifested by or Agency or Postal Unit, where the lachrymose condition is viewed as mere weakness to be taken advantage of.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

Federal Disability Retirement: The Appearance of Perfection

You’ve seen those adds — 99,9% Success Rate!  Or even the 100%, Money-back guarantee.  (Well, if they are willing to give you back your money upon a failure, how is it successful?  Or, of course, the fine details of the agreement will say, for instance — minus any administrative costs that must be deducted, etc.).  There is some truth and honesty to the matter, of course, in that “appearance” of perfection is not the same as perfection itself; but it is the purpose of “appearing” to be perfect without attaining the vaunted status of perfection that is the whole point, is it not?

Somehow, even though we all know that perfection cannot ever be attained (precisely because the two concepts, “perfection” and “man” are incommensurate, as the former requires transcendent precepts unsullied by flaws and mistake-ridden potentialities and the latter is too often defined by qualities lending to errors), we become persuaded that there is a possibility of “near-perfection”, which is no perfection at all but at least is akin to, or has the appearance of, that which we know can never be attained.

Then, of course, there is the matter of how one has attained the appearance of perfection — what class of content has been excluded in order to make that appearance of perfection; how have the percentages of “success” been defined, etc.  There are any number of ways to attain the appearance of perfection, but this we know: The methodology of contorted manners in which the appearance of perfection is reached, is never defined by perfection itself.

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, consult with an OPM Disability Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law.  While “perfection” may never be attained, you will at least know that a realistic assessment will be provided in evaluating your case, and not some blather about one’s appearance of perfection.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Disability Retirement for Federal Employees: The direction of life

We are told from a very early age that we must have one; like winds that carry seasonal warmth and jet streams that bring unseasonable temperatures, we are ingrained to be purposive, teleological and focused upon the goal in mind.

Wisdom-filled proverbs echo beyond the history of instructional transference from parent to child, community to individual and generation to modernity: aiming for the target; sticking to a task; seeing things to their completion; being patient in everything you do; treating others fairly; 5-step, 10-step or multi-step plans for one’s life; we are admonished throughout of the importance of having a direction in our lives, as if the destination has been predetermined and arriving is merely being pointed in the right direction, traveling some distance and getting there without thought.

Some people clearly follow such a linear route – like the proverbial straight line from point A to destination B; then, there are others who never seem to get a handle on such a concept, while most of the rest of us meander through a confounding maze and are stuck somewhere “in-between”, like those kids in the middle of a brood of accomplishments lost in anonymity between the oldest who is the star of the family, the first born and who gets the greatest amount of attention, and the last one who is the “baby” whom everyone fawns over.  But what if a community, a society, the nation as a whole, no longer embraces a cogency of purposive goals?

It is like that “cause” we all live and die for; where modernity scoffs to expunge such lofty ideals, the residue of the populace must abide by its dire consequences, where echoes of past vestiges haunt in cave dwellings of paintings now faded and meaningless, lost forever to the history of silent voices.

Once, there were causes to fight for – of man’s manifest destiny; of fascism to defeat; of the great “Red Scare”; of the domino theory occluding freedom and resulting in totalitarianism; of patriotism and the flag upon a hill; and other images, all the while where the fighting and dying is accomplished not by the sons or daughters of the wealthy and privileged, anymore, but by sons of southern belles and minorities who die or get blown to bits.

Of what door does one knock upon to get one’s direction of life?  Where, in life, do we get a free pass to obtain the map in order to even know where we are, where we are going, and how to get there?

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 positional duties, the direction of one’s life becomes fairly linear whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

There are three “pathways” to steer upon: Stay in the job and suffer; Resign and walk away with nothing; or, the best direction in such a life, is to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.  And, even as to the second of the three roads taken (Resigning) – remember, you have up until one (1) year from the date of separation from Federal Service to file a Federal Disability Retirement application with OPM.

It is, in the end, good to have a compass in order to lead onwards in the right direction of life, wherever that may be, however one may obtain it, and whenever it is finally achieved.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: Organizing the apocalypse

The apocalypse, by definition, has no future.  Whether by biblical reference, or in a generic sense where the foreseen event entails such proportions of catastrophic immensity, the concept itself is beyond the grasp of human comprehension.  It is where Being becomes non-existent, and the existential contrast of the conceptual puzzle encompassing Nothingness is somehow attempted to be understood, if only within the limited means of linguistic expression.

Poetry cannot abide the meaning; prose can barely describe its repose; and human thought is unable to grapple with the vicious circularity of its conundrum:  to comprehend it is to consider its very converse; to think upon the inversion is to extinguish all conceptual paradigms.  It is an act of self-immolation, where the devouring of one’s own flesh must by necessity occur in order to stave off the pangs of starvation, but where each bite merely ensures the death of the guarantor of life.

That is what Malraux touches upon when his characters discuss the self-contradiction of revolutionary movements; the very people who initiate such explosions can never be the ones who continue the implosions following; for, it is the breed itself which cannot remain in order to build.  By their very nature, the destructive forces must themselves disappear, lest the cannibalization of such extinguishment is the intended goal, which is never considered unless anarchy and dystopia are the ends sought.

We often think that those who are compelled by causes which history, in its visionary retrospective insights, can remain to maintain stability and administration of the revolutionary idea; but Mao proved otherwise, and the haunting bones of Cuba’s leaders where poverty, desecration of abandoned ideas and fading combat khakis declare to us that we wish Mick Jagger never came out of retirement.

There is, in every epic of historical proportions, a loss of meaning whenever the cause has been attained, and that is the natural course of life.  The question thus becomes:  Once the pinnacle is reached, what does one do?  In microcosms of life and smallness of living within the spectacle of the common man, the issue that remains and looms amidst is, How to organize the apocalypse.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents one from continuing in one’s chosen Federal or Postal career or vocation of financial stability, the fact that one must end one’s Federal or Postal career early is akin to an apocalypse, where hope is no longer a goal to endure.  That being a fact of irrefutable and irreversible content which arrives at a point of incontrovertible reality, the issue remaining which must be considered is, How do I rationally organize this apocalypse?

Preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is often the first step in ensuring that the metaphorical “revolution” which brings about a change uncalled for, like the wave of a historical sweep in epic battles of mankind’s folly, comes about in a rational, organized and steadfast manner, such that we are not left behind like the haunting whispers of Mao’s Cultural Revolutions or the stale cigar smoke from Castro’s toothless grin, where history laughs in the dark corridors of forgotten tombstones overrun with the swallowing of earth’s grief.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement Attorney: Doldrums

It is an actual pocket of calm in areas of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, where maritime sailors dreaded in days of yore because they presented calm and quietude when the necessity for winds to power the sails of movement suddenly died and disappeared.  One could be trapped for weeks, and sometimes months, when the doldrums hit.

In modern vernacular, of course, they represent a parallel metaphor — of that state of emotional inactivity and rut of life, where melancholy and gloominess overwhelms.  Sometimes, such despair and despondency is purely an internal condition; other times, it is contributed by circumstances of personal or professional environment.

For the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal Worker who suffers from the former because of a medical condition which leads to a state of dysphoria, the need to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits often commingles with the latter, precisely because the internal and external are inevitably interconnected.  The emotional doldrums become exacerbated by the toxic environment engendered and propagated by reactions engaged in by the agency; and the continuing effect becomes a further cause because of the hostility shown and heightened actions proposed.

How does one escape the doldrums of stale despair?  For the mariner whose power depended upon the winds of change, waiting for altered conditions was the only avenue of hope; for the Federal or Postal worker who suffers from a medical condition, such that the medical condition presents a doldrum of another sort, taking affirmative steps by preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal employee or Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is the primary and most effective manner for efficacious change.

Sitting around helplessly like a victim of the vicissitudes of life may have been the way of past responses; for the Federal and Postal employee of modernity, we have greater control over the destiny of one’s future, but to utilize the tools of change requires action beyond mere reflection upon the doldrums of life.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement Lawyer: Preemptive Actions

Knowledge can be a dangerous commodity; partial, or little knowledge, can be all the more damaging, precisely because actions can result based upon incomplete information and slices of factually curtailed composites.

The Court of the Appeals for the Federal Circuit has previously pointed out one of the methodological deficiencies engaged in by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, in its review and determination of Federal Disability Retirement cases:  of focusing upon that which is not included in a Federal Disability Retirement application, as opposed to reviewing the information of what has been received.

Such a distinction may be a subtle one, and a difference which can be easily overlooked, but it reveals much more than mere word-play.  For, what it manifests is an application of a criteria based upon an erroneous assumption, and one which continues to be applied to this day, despite case-law which admonishes OPM to the contrary.

Vanieken-Ryals v. OPM, a 2007 Federal Court of Appeals case, points out the error of OPM’s ways in Federal Disability Retirement cases, where insistence upon “objective” medical evidence continues to dominate, despite the lack of such requirement to the contrary.  Such an issue is especially relevant, of course, in cases where psychiatric medical conditions prevail, and when OPM insists upon the lack of such “objective” medical evidence where none can be obtained, it leads to Federal and Postal employees to react desperately in a preemptively unreasonable frenzy of actions.

Not knowing the law is one thing; knowing, but deliberately ignoring it, is quite another.  But the price Federal and Postal employees pay for when a bureaucracy engages in practices which clearly defy the clear mandate of legal requirement, results in preemptive actions which ultimately lead to another day in Court, to argue that which one thought was previously already established.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Filing for OPM Disability Retirement: The Novel Approach

The genre represents the highest form of literature.  Poetry possesses its eccentric beauty; the short story its ease of brevity for the reader to pick up and finish in convenience of time, and thus its popularity; the biography and the epistemologically privileged cousin, the autobiography, its authentic historicity; and others by design of self-promotion, as Truman Capote’s “non-fiction novel” (an oxymoron?).

But the novel is the king of prose; of a narrative form which allows for many rooms in an endless castle of hidden trap doors and secret galleys full of antiquities and doorways yet to be revealed.  Perhaps that is why, used as an adjective, it defines a uniqueness of approach, akin to the traditional use of the word as a noun representing the highest form of art.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties with the Federal government or the U.S. Postal Service, engaging in a “novel” idea may be the best and only option left.

Where the medical condition no longer allows for the continuation of one’s career, and yet the Federal or Postal employee believes that he or she can still remain productive in the employment arena, it is indeed a novel approach for a benefit to pay for one’s inability to perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s job, and yet allow concurrently for the Federal or Postal employee to enter into the private sector, obtain a second vocation, and make up to 80% of what one’s former position currently pays.

For the Federal or Postal employee who is considering 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, it is precisely that allowance of continuation of productivity which fairly recognizes that there is not necessary incompatibility between a medical condition and contribution of talents.

Like the novel genre and the novel idea, they both acknowledge the penultimate value of human creativity, and allow for the characters to develop in the unfolding saga of a story yet untold.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire