FERS Disability Retirement Benefits: Human Nature

There are other “natures”, of course — of a dog’s or a cat’s; or of a vulture’s, and perhaps of lower order species which we barely give notice to: of spiders (except when they crawl near to us), mice, grasshoppers and frogs.  For species we deem to be less intelligent or possessing the capacity for “free will” (i.e., making decisions and performing acts outside of a predetermined view of what they are “supposed to do”), we tend to have an opinion of, “X does Y because that is the nature of X to do Y”.

Thus, when we read about a traveler who went to a game reserve and got mauled by a lion whom the traveler thought — just a moment before —was “friendly” enough to approach and take a close-up picture of, we shake our heads at the fact that the individual ignored the clear and visible sign which read: “Caution —Do NOT leave your vehicle. Dangerous Animals” or some similar preemptive warning.

Then, of course, there is “our” nature — of Human Nature.  What is it?  We are an animal species which is able to adapt, possess the talent for a thousand things but remain mediocre in all of them.  We cannot run as fast as a cheetah, nor have the ferocity of a lion; we cannot fly like the birds, nor have the venomous bite of a snake.  Yet, we can build cars which can outrace a cheetah, create weapons that do greater damage than a lion’s claws; we can build airplanes that travel greater distances than birds and manufacture bullets that pierce flesh beyond what a snake can deliver.

Of course, we like to think of “human nature” as being, as Aristotle would put it, “rational” first, and vicious somewhere down at the bottom of the list.  But wars, the devastating trails of what we leave behind — they attest more about Human Nature than our rationality.

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 issue of Human Nature as one comprised of cruelty, retribution and back-stabbing is probably not a surprise.  As your medical conditions worsen, you may have noticed a lack of empathy and a growing sense of animosity and contentiousness from your Agency or the Postal Service.

Chalk it up to “Human Nature” and the capacity of human beings for lack of qualities which — while we may like to think of as comprising the essence of humanity — comes out at the worst of times.

Consider, at such a point, whether filing for Federal Disability Retirement might not be the best option available, and consult with a FERS Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement: Refurbishing the emptiness of existence

It is not quite like fixing up the living room, rearranging the furniture in the family room, or even remodeling the bathroom; for, in the end, the soul that feeds upon the emptiness of existence must needs be replenished with things beyond mere material goods; it must be sustained by the worth and value of that “something” transcending gold, emeralds or even the riches of self-satisfying egocentric accumulations of treasures beyond.

The refurbishing of the emptiness of existence hits upon each of us at some time during our short and brutish presence upon this world; and for some, it is the coldness of responses received that dismays and often destroys.  We can rearrange the furniture on the deck of the proverbial sinking ship, but the cold reality still remains when that foreboding sense of solitary loneliness continues to overwhelm us.

Existence is a reality that we had no voice about; emptiness is a choice that comes about through failings of our own, as when others have determined that friendship, kinship, affinity and affection are not worth pursuing — at least, not with you.

We have a lifetime to foster human relationships, and yet, sadly, most of us keep burning the bridges that have been constructed, severing ties that once bonded one another and set out to destroy any shadows that follow upon the warmth of human linkage.  We like to “remake” ourselves; to “win”, to “defeat”, to be the victor in all worthwhile endeavors.  Then, at the end of life’s work in progress, what are we left with?  Emptiness and loneliness.  Was it all worthwhile?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have this sense of it all — that a medical condition has pervaded, has impacted and prevented you from performing one or more of the essential elements of your Federal or Postal job duties — it may be time to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

It may come at the very moment when you feel as if you need to refurbish the emptiness of existence or, more likely, it is because the medical condition that is overwhelming you has forced the issue.  Often, when life appears to need rearranging, it is the other guy who is in the process of refurbishing his or her emptiness of existence, and it has nothing to do with you; you need to do what needs to be done because others will not recognize the value and worth that you have all along been working so fervently to create and maintain.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Information: Overload

This is a perilous time we live in.  Some would counter that it all depends upon one’s outlook and perspective; that for those who have an adventuresome spirit, a sense of excitement for the future, and a fearless attitude in facing challenges, such times as these are for the bold and independent-minded.

Youth, of course, has its advantages; having nothing to lose, they race blindly ahead without concerns for the consequences left behind.  Nostalgia for a time gone can be infectious and wasteful; there are too many things happening in modernity to allow for reminiscences to crowd in.

This is an Age of Overload.  We read about and watch popular series about a time past, of horses and buggies, of simplicity in living, and wonder how in the world did we become what we are today?  Is it all a grand illusion?  Were there as many problems, worries, concerns and angst-ridden days as these days?  Was life ever really simple where children danced daily through fields of wildflowers during summer months of lazy and carefree memories, like wistful shadows wilting on a rainy day where no one spoke in fearful whispers beyond the day’s journey of time?  Or was it always like it is today — of overload and constant flux, of working beyond hours assigned and never seeming to meet the day’s obligations or responsibilities?

Then, of course, those beset with a medical condition have an exponential effect beyond the human capacity to endure.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, where the medical condition begins to prevent the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s position, the overload that occurs because of the impediment of the medical condition itself can be overwhelming and irreconcilable.

Federal Disability Retirement may not be the most optimal solution in all circumstances, but it is often the only choice remaining.  Either that, or the Federal or Postal worker who can no longer perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal position will have to simply endure, and often face the consequences of workplace harassment, increasing pressures and continuing deterioration of one’s medical conditions because of the added stresses.

In the end, it is this overload of stresses that defeats and destroys, and preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is the only way to avoid the inevitable results of a society burdened with overload.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Medical Retirement: Counting coup

It is not always in the outward and very-public display of emotions, in which a battle is fought and won; often, it is the restraining of a capacity and potential to reflexively counter, but held back just at the point of harm, that determines the pinnacle of gaining prestige.

Acts of bravery for a Plains Indian did not necessarily require harm inflicted upon an enemy; counting coup and the subsequent rise in respect and prestige could involve the mere touching of an enemy, while escaping unharmed despite that close encounter with the savage face of danger.  It is not always in the completion of an intended act that the standard by which the success or failure of the act is judged; rather, just at the point of fulfillment, the holding back or the deliberate withdrawal can be the penultimate evidence that one could have, but by sheer will of grace of self-control, did not.

In Western Civilization, perhaps the parallelism can only be embraced with an analogy of sorts; of the subtle remark with a duality of meanings, placed just at the right time in response to an otherwise untamable tongue wagging about with destructive force by its aggressive tone, ugly words and offensive remarks.  Or, of the realization that one is now a prisoner in an “enemy” camp, and the escape out is to stealthily retreat in the quiet of a proverbial night, without harming the members who may once have been counted as friends and colleagues.

This is often the situation the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker finds him/herself in, when a medical condition arises and the Federal or Postal employee is no longer able to perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job.  Suddenly, the Federal or Postal employee is treated as an “enemy”, and the initial reaction is to counterattack, as the initial onslaught by one’s coworkers, supervisors, managers, etc., was neither deservedly received no invited by any act or statement by the innocent Federal or Postal worker.

But is the battle – the actually harm inflicted and the legal imbroglio ensuing – worth the hassle?  Or, is it better to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, submitted (ultimately) to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and like the warriors of past in the battles fought in the far-off Plains of the American West, before the white settlers came to decimate and exterminate with the modern technology of weaponry unheard of in its efficiency as a killing machine – is it preferable by counting coup and withdrawing unharmed, in order to secure a future brighter for tomorrow, and less left with the residue of bloodstained wounds harboring lasting pain in the essence of one’s soul.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: When and what to file

In preparing an application for Federal Disability Retirement, multiple standard government forms must be completed.  As most Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers are under the “FERS” system (an acronym for “Federal Employees Retirement System”) as opposed to the older system of CSRS (standing for, “Civil Service Retirement System”), the applicable forms are comprised of two (2) “sets”:  The SF 3107 Series (encompassing the basic forms needed to apply for “immediate retirement”, which is part of the process of filing for Federal Disability Retirement) and the SF 3112 Series (which includes the Applicant’s Statement of Disability – SF 3112A; the Supervisor’s Statement – SF 3112B ; and the Agency’s efforts for Reassignment and Accommodation form – SF 3112D).

Both sets of forms must be completed, and it is essential that the applicant understands the complexity, involvement and onerous nature of each form, before engaging in the process of preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application.  All such forms – once completed – need to be “filed” with the appropriate agency, and this becomes somewhat tricky.

To understand the administrative process of the entire procedural phenomenon, we need to begin with the oversight of some statutory principles.  First, all Federal Disability Retirement applications must be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management within one (1) year of being separated from the Federal Agency or the U.S. Postal Service.  But there are “sub-parts” to such a Statute of Limitations (so named because it limits the ability of a Federal or Postal employee from filing a Federal Disability Retirement application if one goes past the 1-year deadline).

The first “subpart” concerns the initial 31 days after separation from Federal Service.  If you, as a Federal employee or U.S. Postal employee, have been separated, but not for more than thirty one (31) days, then you should still file through your agency’s Human Resource Office or the H.R. Shared Service Office of the U.S. Postal Service, located in Greensboro, North Carolina.  As a practical matter, if the time of separation is approaching the 31st day, you should probably just wait until after the 31-day period, and instead file directly with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management in Boyers, Pennsylvania – which brings us to the second “subpart” concerning separation from Federal Service or the U.S. Postal Service:  If you have been separated for over 31 days from the Federal Agency or the U.S. Postal Service, then you are required to file your Federal Disability Retirement application directly to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management in Boyers, Pennsylvania.

Likely, if you have been separated from the Federal Agency or the U.S. Postal Service, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management in Boyers, Pennsylvania will request your SF 50 or PS Form 50, which is evidence of the actual separation from your Federal Agency (now former) or the U.S. Postal Service; but even if your former Agency or the U.S. Postal Service has not yet issued you such a form, indicating the formal separation from Federal Service, you should always make sure that you file your Federal Disability Retirement application before the 1-year Statute of Limitations has expired.

Beyond these “fundamentals” of when and what to file, are substantive and procedural issues which are too complex to extrapolate in a limited forum.  To further understand the intricacies, you as a Federal or Postal employee, if considering preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, should either exhaustively research the statutory or case-law background in preparing your Federal or Postal Disability Retirement application, or consult an attorney who is knowledgeable about issues concering the proper preparation, formulation and filing of a Federal Disability Retirement application.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Rhymeless Poems

When did it happen?  Certainly, by the time E.E. Cummings came upon the scene, with his oddity of typographical stream of consciousness, the acceptance of it had already come to fruition; or, perhaps it was in the translation of foreign such vehicles of linguistic amalgamations – when the first frustrated translator threw up his hands in disgust at a Japanese Haiku or a German verse of too numerous a compendium of throat-clearing consonants, that the advent of the rhymeless poem reached its fulfillment and pinnacle of public acceptance.  Or, maybe we just ran out of words.

Words are funny vehicles of communication.  With facial expressions, the scent of another, the movement of body or a sense of fear, anticipation and the adrenaline of life, one can discern an endless eternity of subtleties that, in their inexhaustible divining of messages sent and received, can further be conjoined, compounded and confounded by the essence of human complexity.  But words are limited to the meanings of each; and in the finite world of vocabularies existent, the rhyming words are that much more delimited.

It is not, as Wittgenstein would point out, something that we can just create out of whole cloth; for, there can be no “private language game” of one, as the very essence of it would be lost in the creation of a singular language game – communication, which is the purpose and teleological livelihood, cannot be justified if no one else understands the word, the greater concept, or the linguistic artifice intended.

Sure, sure – words are created everyday, especially in order to accommodate the growing technology of Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, etc.; and the abbreviated forms of linguistic devices necessitated by text messaging, as well as the diversity of communicating through emoticons, etc., only prove the point:  All such such inventions and convoluted conventions of acceptability have a finite basis in any algorithm created.  In the end, we are just left with more words, and the inability to find that perfect rhyme in a verse of poetic need.   And that is the point, isn’t it?

For the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker, having a medical condition is similar to reaching that point in writing a poem, when the rhyming word can no longer be found.  Life itself is like an endless verse of poetry; we flow along and rhyme from word to word, with a cadence found in maturity of experiences; then, one day, a medical condition develops, and the rhyming verses suddenly pause.  We don’t know what to do.  Search as we may, we cannot find that perfect word, or that acceptable cadence of living life.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, may not be that discovery of the perfect word to end the silence of a rhymeless poem; it is, however, the last word in the verse of a Federal or Postal employee’s career, which may save the day from leaving the empty space blank, and instead, allowing for the next cadence in this continuing drama of verse-filled experiences, to take a leap into a future of security and new beginnings.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Removal and/or Retirement from Federal Position: The cultivated soul

The loss in Western Civilization of the pursuance of Truth (note the capitalization of the term, in contradistinction from the mundane daily tropes of common factual observations, such as the classic example of pointing to an object and making a declarative utterance, for purely identification’s sake) has resulted in a vacuum of sorts; the consequences reverberate by group identification and causes aggregated based upon preference and subjective elevation of all things decadent.

No one ever talks about the angels of yore; or of the priority of character, and whether the intellect should rule, the appetitive would be subjugated, and the passions controlled.  All animals have equal rights (or so my dogs always believed, anyway, as if there was ever any question in the household); and the human species no longer retains the lofty position once held, where angels sometimes visited and the gods would intervene in playful fits with fated concubines.

The very idea of a cultivated soul once meant something; now, replacements arrive daily in doses of self-improvement programs, soothing the egos of hurt childhoods and health combines where metamorphosis no longer connotes Kafka’s transformational metaphor of a tortured essence of humanity, but merely the mundane wants and fantasies of stardom and being able to be accepted into the superficial realm of the “beautiful” set.

Kardashian and Kanye aside, the great multitude of goals set, priorities garnered, and teleological ends met, no longer includes the antiquated construct of the cultivated soul.  We certainly continue to give lipservice to such latent antiquities; of how education is all important (though the focus is merely upon the ends — of grades and padding of resumes, as opposed to the substantive content of one’s character); and of becoming a “responsible adult” with independence and empathy of character remaining a striving purpose of life itself (despite the ballooning debt and deteriorating economy which undermines all such youthful goals).

Where did that voice go, vanished and vanquished in the shattered inner self where the quiet reflection once persuaded and convinced us all that the hidden worth of a human being could still rise from the ashes of a regenerated Phoenix, when gods still protected and the shriveled remains of a tortured goblin would scurry away into the far corners of an empty universe?  The cultivated soul always needed time; it required reflection, solitude, and a peaceful self-assurance that the coming days would produce a moment of relapse into the timeless carriages of a rhythmic ride through life’s trials and travails.

For the Federal employee and U.S. Postal worker who suffers from a medical condition, such that the medical condition no longer allows for continuation in one’s Federal or Postal position, the concept of a cultivated soul may be of a distance beyond a bridge too far.  Pain, agony; cognitive dysfunctions and progressive deterioration; these are the daily hallmarks for the Federal or Postal employee in the present circumstances and currency of today’s slice of life.  But that is precisely why it is important to prepare an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

For, whether the rest of the world recognizes the sustaining force of Truth in a world condoned by Falsity, the objective world still recognizes that the true essence of the human species will always reverberate amidst the cultivated souls, and to attain and achieve that end, one must first get beyond the medical condition suffered, and begin the steps taken towards a plateau of living where health has been achieved, and the quietude of a contemplative moment may yet be grasped.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire