Federal Disability Retirement: The Strange Mixture

It is, indeed, strange.  What is it about Man — neither can he run as fast as other animals; nor does he have the brute strength to dominate the other; but he has the cunning to lay traps, to create diversions, and to possess the strange mixture of God and Brute.  It is that strange mixture which makes for uniqueness — of never a pure predator, for empathy and kindness can make him pause before hunger (or greed) leads to extinction of another species.

We have created civilizations which span the earth and beyond, and in the process, have destroyed the fern and fauna necessary for the survival of other species; and yet, we pause with regret, and make some feeble attempts to preserve and conserve.  We are a strange admixture — of brash and self-doubt, of the exclamation point, and the comma to pause.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a debilitating 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, that strange mixture is the chemical balance which compels survival, and preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS is what will result in the aggressive, dominant side of you to get through this bureaucratic conundrum of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, under FERS.

Contact a Federal Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and see whether or not preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, may endeavor you to fulfill the promise of potentiality residing in the strange admixture of God and Brute.

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.

 

OPM Disability Retirement: In How We See Ourselves

When does the development of the “Self” begin?  How does a personality form?  Where does uniqueness begin, eccentricity spark and individualism falter?  Is there a specific timeline in terms of months or years?

Anyone who has been a parent or grandparent recognizes the point at which a child begins to become conscious of the “self” — a gradual development from “baby” to “toddler”, where greater awareness of the objective world, the various parts of one’s body, the reflection in the mirror, the status of one’s existence and the place one holds within the greater universe, etc.

Later in life, there comes a critical point in how we see ourselves — of having self confidence; of whether we possess a “positive image” of our place within the world; the daily moods we embrace; the self-image we carry about with us throughout society, etc.  For many, it is a struggle — and when a medical condition impacts us, that “self-image” of how we see ourselves can be brutally challenging.

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, how we see ourselves may compel you to begin preparing for Federal Disability Retirement.  For, aside from how we see ourselves, the priority of first taking care of one’s health and not allowing for your career to completely destroy your health, should be the priority of first concern.

Contact a FERS Disability Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and move beyond what your Federal Agency or Postal Service has done or not done to impact how you see yourself, and instead, take care of the number one priority in how we see ourselves, by taking care of yourself.

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.

 

OPM Disability Retirement under FERS: The Missing Details

We often know generally about a person’s life — of this person’s promotion in a career or that person’s recent tragedy; or perhaps we read about someone’s travels or another’s triumphs; but it is often the details that we are never given.

How important are the details?  It all depends.  Whether it is from that antiquated show entitled, “The Rest of the Story” or from the rote telling around the dinner table from Grandpa’s memories, the narrative told often leaves out important details, or fills us with too many irrelevancies as to detract from the main point of the story.

Sometimes, details are deliberately omitted — as in veterans of foreign wars who generalize about the fear and mayhem experienced, but leave out crucial details, whether for fear of reliving them or to spare the listener uninvited descriptions of horrors encountered.  Other times, too many details are given, and like the storyteller who knows not how it will all end, so the fact of bringing up the minutiae of irrelevancies may provoke a yawn of boredom when peppered with ingredients that will not bring out the taste and flavor of the main course for dinner.

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 missing details in one’s narrative may be crucial — or an irrelevant distraction.  The “story teller” of one’s story concerning a medical condition may not be the most “objective” person to tell that needed story, precisely because a sense of objectivity is often lost when the Federal Disability Retirement applicant is both the “patient” as well as the main character in this narrative journey of trying to become a disability retiree under FERS.

Consult with a FERS Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement law, and find out what the missing details are, what details are necessary and where the details fit into the greater picture of life’s misgivings before an audience of bureaucrats at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Filing for OPM Disability Retirement: Goals of abstract purity

Idealism allows for the plethora of such concepts; cynicism born of age and experience quells the exuberance of such vaunted beginnings.

When we were young — no, not the opening lines of a Christopher Robin poem where the hunt for a clove of honey is the day’s goal, but an observation about life’s folly — we harbored principles and moral codes that required strict purity: Success without compromise; life that is perfectly lived; avoidance of mistakes that our parents made; beautiful kids who will exhibit their inherent creativity at every turn, without a wail or disobedient scream of tantrum; and even if such goals of abstract purity never come to fruition, at least there is Instagram in the modern era where we can pretend to have achieved such paradise of ends considered.

Youth pretends to such abstractions; reality tends to soil such purity; and goals formulated at the beginning of life require constant moderation and adaptation to the experience of reality that is encountered throughout.  Such goals of abstract purity are best left in the Ivory Towers of Academia, or in the forgotten memories of childhood dreams.  For, it is reality and the objective world which must be contended with, and not the conceptual paradigms that make up the dreams and fantasies of our former selves.  In the end, grownups don’t have time to waste upon the goals of abstract purity because life is too challenging and reality too stark.

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 position, the Goals of Abstract Purity should be replaced with the Ends of Realistic Objectivity: Of continuing with the Postal Service or Federal Agency only to the extent that one’s health will allow, and to begin the process of preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management under FERS.

And what of those former Goals of Abstract Purity?  You should place them upon the heap of memories that allowed for youthful folly, and realize that one’s health is the ultimate goal of purity — and it is no longer a mere abstraction, but a reality that must be faced.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: Weight of evidence

When you walk into a room full of people, how does one differentiate, define, separate and discern?  Remember that once-popular fictional work entitled, Tarzan of the Apes by (originally) Edgar Rice Burroughs?

There is a scene (whether from one of the various versions depicted on screen) where young Tarzan is surrounded by a crowd of “civilized” individuals staring, prodding, looking on with curiosity — and the young man who had been brought up in the wild lacks the capacity to compartmentalized the sudden bombardment of overstimulation, and runs amok amidst the finery of a social setting.

How is it that we learn to differentiate and categorize from among the massive aggregate of stimuli directed at us?  Do we, as Kant posits, impose mental categories upon the chaos of the world?  How do we learn to determine the “weight” of importance, significance or even of relevance upon the various activities that surround, impart and become directed at ourselves or around and about our purview?

And in the legal context, how do we know what weight of evidence should be submitted, and how to organize it into a priority of relevance?

You know the old joke — or is it merely a “trick”? — Of telling a person to “listen carefully,” and misleading the listener into thinking that the question you will be asking concerns the number of people left, when in fact you are deliberately misguiding them, saying: “Now 5 people entered the elevator and it went up 2 floors, then 3 people got off and 5 more got on, then the elevator went up again 2 more floors, where 1 person got on and…”.  At the end of the “story”, the question posed is not, “How many people are left?”, but instead, “What floor are you on”?

The evidence for both are there; it is the weight upon the relevant information that was missed.

Or, of that eccentric oddball who watches an action-packed movie or episode, and at the end of it, while everyone is commenting about this or that favorite scene of explosions, mayhem and bad-guy-got-his-due scene, the odd-man-out says, “Yes, I thought that the person who wore the yellow tie should have retied it, because it was a bit crooked.”

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, it is important to recognize the weight of evidence, the relevance of the information submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and the significance of guiding OPM into viewing the evidence with a roadmap of persuasion.

Legal memorandums that delineate the evidence compiled, argue the law that is persuasive, and preemptively organizes the basic components in answering “why” a client is eligible — nay, entitled — to Federal Disability Retirement benefits, is important in light of the variety of evidence being submitted, not only by the applicant, but also by the Agency or the Postal Facility (which is not always favorable).

Is the Federal Disability Lawyer you have consulted or are about to consult, doing this?

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Disability Retirement for Federal Employees: Minor pleasures

At what point does the transference occur?  Minor pleasures are those interludes in life that make for everything to become, and remain, worthwhile; sometimes, because of various tumults in our lives, the designation of “minor” becomes altered, and becomes “major” – like the dream fulfilled of that kid who toiled in the minor leagues for so many years and finally got his big break by being called up to the majors.

Is such an indication of a metamorphosis a harbinger of something else?  If the minor pleasures of life – coffee with a piece of chocolate; reading a favorite book; a swim in the ocean; an early morning walk (or run) with the dog; or even a weekend, afternoon nap – are suddenly taken away, what (major) consequences would accrue?  Does subtraction of it, or negation of the enjoyment, determine the substantive input and extent of the designation?

If it is missed to the point where it makes you miserable, does it indicate that it was never “minor” to begin with, but of major proportions all along, but you just didn’t realize it?

How about its opposite – a “minor irritant” – does that possess a meaning encompassing a parallel but corollary effect?  What if your “significant other” engaged daily in a habit that irritated you, but in a minor way – you know, those things that, when you were dating (or, to show your age, applying the anachronistic terminology of “courting”) or just hanging out together until you both decided to make the arrangement permanent, it all seemed “cute” and attractive, but now is a bothersome dig, but not enough to engage a war over – like blowing one’s nose loudly in public, or picking one’s toenails and leaving the remains on the bathroom floor; or leaving a door unlocked, etc.

At what point does a “minor” irritant become a major one?  When you get into a fight and you point out the laundry list of such irritants?

But take it in another sense – all of a sudden, that significant other dies or departs, and you realize that all of those irritants are suddenly missed, and you actually wish that you were tormented by them, because they amount to minor pleasures that awaken the dull sensibilities of life’s monotony.

Medical conditions can be like that – like a minor irritant that becomes a major complaint.  Or, the absence thereof can be the minor pleasure, where you remember that once, not so long ago, you were fit and healthy, and just the mere fact of a medical condition’s absence is a minor pleasure in life.

For Federal and 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 one’s Federal or Postal job, the question is, What is the point of life’s minor pleasures?  Is it to make everything else tolerable, or to be enjoyed regardless?

Filing a Federal Disability Retirement application is often not just a necessity, but a path towards regaining a sense of balance – of asserting those minor pleasures in life that have been erased and eradicated because of the constant harassment at work and the hostility that kills all joy.

Preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is just the first step in the long road towards getting an approval from OPM. But it is a worthwhile step, especially if the goal of life itself is to enjoy those minor pleasures of living – like attending to one’s health as a priority in order to once again relish those minor pleasures.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Medical Retirement: Myths of our own making

What stories we carry within our own heads; the narrative of our own lives, as well as the intersecting conveyances brought by others; the web of linguistic larcenies borrowed, bought and sometimes sold, become who we are and the essence of our being within the world of our phenomenology of existence.  Sometimes, when a lie is told and the piece of puzzle will no longer fit into the greater collage of the manifold tapestry we carry about within our psyche, a rearrangement of sorts must occur.

Perhaps, we discovered, through correspondence and other confirming evidentiary apparatus otherwise irrefutable, that the uncle whose reputation as the moral compass of fidelity had fathered an illegitimate child (of course, such an anachronistic term no longer applies, as marriage no longer validates legitimacy or otherwise).  Perhaps, a meeting with this “family” of prior anonymity becomes a necessity, which then opens experiential doors to other discoveries and nuances of life’s misgivings.

The narrative of one’s life, the connections intertwined and the stories told, must like the piece of a jigsaw puzzle misplaced, be rearranged or otherwise left blank, like the echo of a plaintive voice in a soft hum heard through a mist of cackling geese.  Are secrets worth keeping, anymore?

In modernity, where technology allows for the melding of myth and maxim; where demarcations between the creation of self and the posting of what constitutes the presentation of that being identified as the person who declares to be such, is merely one button away from the virtual reality of a gemstone shining in the moonlit cavern of a secret cave where treasures hidden from pirates of yore flutter with the ghosts of dead seamen and spinning yarns of horrors untold; what we are in the essence of our being has been replaced by the talent to tell of who we are not.  And yet — truthfulness, veracity, validation of identity, and certitude of conduct; they all seem to remain as vestiges of a necessary universe.

The myths of our own making have always been so throughout the history of storytelling.  Today, it is merely more so because of the plenitude of everyone wanting to tell his or her tale, and of every detail most of us don’t want to know.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from medical conditions which prevent the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties with the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service, a unique sense of duality must be conquered:  there is the need, on the one hand, to “tell all” in the form of SF 3112A, the Applicant’s Statement of Disability; and, yet, what must be revealed concerns the most “private” of one’s narrative — that of the medical condition and the impact of the medical condition upon one’s professional and private lives.

“Myths” are not merely of make-believe; they are the stories told in traditional societies in order to make a larger point.  Indeed, the myths of our own making may sometimes include the fears we hold onto, as well as the uninformed presumptions we grasp at in a bureaucratic process which is both complex and administratively difficult to maneuver through.  Sound advice from a legal expert in the area of Federal Disability Retirement law will help to dispel the myths unwarranted, as well as validate the maxims required.

In the end, the myths of our own making often reflect the haunting fears of experiences we encountered in those days when childhood memories cast their shadows upon the dungeons of our lives, and when trolls and gnomes suspected to reside in hidden crevices scratch at the doorways leading to the most private of our inner fears.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal & Postal Employee Disability Retirement: The carousel of life

It is the easiest of analogies to ponder:  of a vision in the humdrum of circularity; different sizes, shapes, and images of artistry; of the choices we make and the alternatives offered; where we sit in life, of the approaches we take and the variable speed of the up and down motion; do we possess the fearless temerity to change midway from a lumbering, elephantine facade to the sleek and pathological ride of a cheetah?  Does the music have the concordant synchronicity such that it is neither an annoyance nor a distracting disturbance?  Or do we even take note of the loud cacophony of the blaring entourage, or merely as a backdrop to the excitement in the very ride we undertake?

Some recent intellectuals have argued that human beings comprehend their interaction, environment, place and significance in this world, only through the thought-process of analogical thinking; that the intersection of words, linguistic culpability and attachment of language games to encounters with the objective, impervious world of reality, becomes elevated to that Rorschach moment when the obfuscating inkblots of an objective universe otherwise indistinguishable from the insular parallelism of one’s own conceptual constructs suddenly explodes with insight and vigorous apprehension.

That was the problem with the nascent approach of existentialists; somehow, we all recognized that something was missing.  But instead of taking a right turn, that missing “something” took the wrong path down the corridors of Foucault and Derrida, and allowed for deconstruction to embrace the self-destructive charisma of nothingness.  How we understand the world; what we impart to it; the self-image of whence we came; and the walking pictures we carry about in the chasms of our psyche; they all matter, and the narrative of our lives become written the longer we survive in this anachronism called “life”.  We have become misfits in a virtual world of our own making.

The metaphors we establish within ourselves; the analogies we create to comprehend; the novel within each of us and the narrative of carefully chosen ideologies; all cumulatively define the essence of our being.  And thus as we ride the carousel of life, or watch ourselves ride from a distance, matters little to those who have decided to sit this round out; and yet, they, too — whether from afar or in a slumber of repose, must by necessity hear the music which plays regardless of whether one rides the circularity of the metaphor.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, of course, such an analogy can be a poignant reminder of the current state of turmoil.  Perhaps the analogy takes on greater significance if we posit a mechanical failure — of stoppage of the rhythmic ride, and where the music also blares a discordant trumpet of shattered symphonies screeching with discomfort down the sensitive eardrums of the bystanders.

Federal employees and U.S. Postal Service 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 the Federal or Postal positional duties, have a clear choice to make:  Stay on the broken carousel; get off and walk away with nothing; or, of greater benefit and reward, to prepare an effective Federal Disability Retirement application and submit it to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

If the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, and has the minimum years of service in order to become eligible, then it is time to consider that it is not the carousel of life that has broken, but merely failure of the operator to take into account the suitability of the particular vision with the individual embracing that concept.  It is not always the rider’s fault; sometimes, the faulty ride itself has miscalculated the algorithm of synchronizing the music to the roundabout.  Think of it in terms of the man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz — but then, that is for another blog altogether.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: The Default Mode Network (DMN)

In neuroscience, it represents various regions in the brain which engage in intersecting activities beyond a normal volume of interplay, and like a superhighway of liveliness, the correlative process of functioning is maintained at an exponential level of rapid-fire inter-connectivity when the human brain is not focused upon a particular task in the “outside” world, but rather, when engaged in the insular universe of daydreaming, thinking, or wandering in meandering thoughts.

Thus, the high-functioning network of synapses and neuro-cognitive hot-wires activates by default when one is at a “wakeful rest” — meaning, when the eyes are open, but focused inward as opposed to the outer environment of external stimuli and purposeful, productive activity.

The default mode is most active when the mind is passive and at rest; it is the anomaly of the brain, where the opposite occurs in relation to a subconscious characteristic of the organism.  It is this insular conundrum which also powers other mechanisms; and so when an electronic device falters, we engage a “default” mode where the inner sanctum of the wiring regenerates by reverting back to its original existence.

It is of interest that evolution favored such activity of the brain, where it awaits the quietude of self-reflection on the outside (at least in appearance, if not in reality), when the sudden increase of activity is triggered on the inside.  But that type of convex reflection of self paralleling its very opposite is what often happens in all of life; even in the rather mundane example of turning one’s back, when the knives become sharper and the stabbers come out of their cubbyholes.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition may necessitate filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the workings of the Default Mode Network is instructive in the following way:  For the Federal or Postal employee, there is always activity even in a state of non-activity.  Productivity as judged by the “outside” world is not the only “means-testing” modality to go by.  Other things matter — sometimes hidden, otherwise overtly exposed.

The fact that you may suffer on the outside may not impact others into any greater activity of sympathy or empathetic responsiveness.  What matters in the end for the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal worker who can no longer perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal positional duties, is to engage the outer world in preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with OPM, in order that one may attain a level of wakeful rest which the Default Mode Network is seeking to accomplish.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire