Federal Disability Retirement Help: Adumbration

It is a vague foreshadowing for future events — often a sense of unease, a non-specific feeling of dire foreboding, or when someone says, “I cannot put my finger upon it but…”.

It is when your dog acts skittish, but you don’t quite know why until some unexpected event occurs, and you pause and wonder, “Was he trying to forewarn me?”  Or what the Native Americans in tradition and mythology could foretell because of their intimate connection to the behavioral psychology of birds, deer, other animals, etc., and even of rocks and boulders which shimmered some secretive reflection of nature’s future unease.

Adumbration is the sense of knowing without being specific; of an intimate connection to one’s context, but where context is now merely a shadowy doubt no longer ensconced upon the altar of Man’s worshipping misgivings.  Are you a Federal employee or a U.S. Postal Worker?  Are your medical conditions becoming an adumbration of a future yet uncertain?

One’s future cannot flourish, let alone merely continue, in one’s Federal or Postal job, precisely when there exists an incompatibility between one’s medical conditions and one’s Federal or Postal positional duty requirements.

Contact a FERS Disability Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and consider whether or not the adumbrations revealed in the symptomatologies one experiences is not the basis of a viable Federal Disability Retirement case.

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.

 

FERS Disability Retirement under OPM: The Difficult and Complex Case

Not every difficult case is complex; and, vice versa, not every complex case is difficult.

The “difficulty” of a case may be inherent or external — of problems within the body of the case, or some external elements which impacts upon the case.  Complexities can be qualitative or quantitative — arising from some element of a case which makes it more than the “run-of-the-mill” issue, or influenced by a multitude and variety of issues to be resolved.

Almost all cases have some inherent difficulties, and the complexity of a case can often be simplified by systematically resolving some of the inherent difficulties presented.  Often, a “complex” case is merely a matter of perspective — where the client believes in complications which in reality have no impact upon the case.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, and which triggers the need to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, an initial consultation with an OPM Disability Lawyer who specializes in FERS Disability Retirement Law will often ferret out the complexities, define the difficulties, and simplify the issues to be resolved.

Every case has difficulties and complexities, but you should make sure that they are “real” ones, and not merely born out of not knowing the issues which are relevant.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Pushing Forward

This is a society that always pushed forward.  Older societies; countries and groups that have been around for a long time; established families and ones declaring aristocratic lineage — they all rely upon the past.  It is the glory of the past that gives credence and status to most other societies; ours is a personality for the future, and so it is difficult when an illness, injury or disabling medical condition holds us back, keeps us static or restrains us from pushing forward.

Forward progress has always been the gauge of success, the measurement of merit and the stature of upward mobility.  The frustration felt because of this recent pandemic is emblematic of our inability to remain in place.  Pushing forward has always been our identity, our force of attraction, and to hold back goes against our very nature.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition is holding you back from performing successfully all of the essential elements of your job, preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application may be the way to push forward.  Yes, it is a sort of “pulling back” — but only as a temporary measure.

Federal Disability Retirement encourages the medical retiree to work in the private sector and make up to 80% of what your former position currently pays, and in that sense, retiring on a medical disability is simply another way of “pushing forward” — just in a different career.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS Disability Retirement from the OPM: The option of nothing

Inertness for a human being is always an option; although normally a default choice, it is nevertheless an alternative one chooses, rather than what we state to ourselves in justifying the negation of doing something: Just disregard it, and it will go away.  The default is embraced once the choice is made to do nothing further.  Governments are great at that, and ours in particular — of kicking the proverbial can “down the road” and letting the next generation of voters decide upon the non-decision of critical goods and services, all the while talking a good game about what “needs to be done” and “should be done.”

The question that remains unanswered throughout is always: Is the option of nothing the best option? And further: Do we always have to take the best option, or is “letting it go” and disregarding the option to affirmatively make a decision on an important matter sometimes “good enough”?

One can always avoid these latter questions by positing the conditional of: “It all depends” upon the particular circumstances, and that may be true to the extent that, in certain situations, the option for nothing is the better option given the other options available.  In general, however, inertness is merely the lazy man’s out, or an avoidance that is emphasized by a desire of negation — of not wanting to make a decision at all.

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 ones’ Federal or Postal job, the option of nothing will normally exacerbate matters.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is a long and arduous path through multiple administrative facets which requires expertise and thoughtful planning in maneuvering beyond the bureaucratic morass.  Because of this, the option of nothing is really not an option at all; it is, instead, a self-harming decision that can have dire legal consequences resulting from the inaction.  As such, consulting with an attorney who specializes in preparing, formulating and filing for FERS Disability Retirement benefits becomes a critical step in a Federal or Postal worker’s “next step” in deciding to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.

In the end, the option of nothing is no option at all; it is merely the non-option of inertness, which ignores the greater option of doing something about that which needs to be done.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement from the OPM: Expectations

What are they?  Is it something that we place upon ourselves, or merely the burden of what others have said?  Are there implied ones as opposed to direct and blunt ones?  Do they scar and damage throughout our lives, based upon the haunting sense of what we believe our parents demanded?  Are expectations the cumulative juncture caught between our own dreams, the demands of parents, and what we believe society considers success or failure?

Do we carry them about without an awareness of their influence, forgotten in the closets of our memories until psychoanalytical triggers suddenly bring them to the fore and where we suddenly blurt out, “Oh, yes, that is where it all comes from!”  And what happens when reality blunders upon expectations and the two conflict within the agony of our lives — do we (or more appropriately put, can we) abandon them and leave them behind in the ash heaps of discarded disappointments?

And when do we become “smart enough” to realize that the old vestiges of expectations need to be reevaluated and prioritized, and not allowed to remain as haunting voices that we no longer remember from whence they came, but remain as unwanted guests within the subconscious purview of our daily existence?

Expectations — we all have them; but of priorities in our lives, we rarely reorganize them in order to meet the present needs of our complex lives.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition begins to prevent the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s job and position, it may be time to re-prioritize those expectations that one has about one’s career, one’s future, one’s…life.

Expectations can be a positive force — of placing demands that spur one towards heights previously unimaginable; but that which is a positive force can turn upon itself and become a negative influence, especially when the check of reality fails to make one realize that priorities must be reassessed based upon the changing circumstances that life itself brings about.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits because of one’s deteriorating health may not be what one ever “expected” — but, then, all expectations have always been conditional in the sense that the demands made depended upon circumstances remaining the same.  When circumstances change, expectations must similarly adapt.

Preparing and submitting an effective Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS, through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, may seem like a lowering of one’s expectations; yet, as it was always conditional upon the state of one’s health, a concomitant alteration of one’s expectations must meet the reality of one’s changed circumstances.

That is the reality of life’s lesson: Prioritize — health, family, career and the changing levels of expectations.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire
Postal & Federal Employee Retirement Attorney

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement Benefits: Remakes

Some hate them and vow never to view or accept them in any way, being purists at heart and unable to fathom any possibility that improvement can be had upon an old classic; others — the opposite side of the coin — welcome anything new and will relish all updated versions where the old can be replaced by the new.  Still others remain in a somewhat “neutral” frame of mind: Acceptance in the form of saying to one’s self, “Well, any remake is merely a new and different movie; you can’t compare the two because they are different interpretations by different people.”  Or, perhaps a more moderated tonality: “Let’s just give it a chance.”

Can Jeff Bridges be any better than John Wayne as U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn?  Can any modern adaptation recapture the magic in Twin Peaks or improve upon its avant-garde approach?  Can there be a “better” Charlie than Diane Keaton in John le Carre’s The Little Drummer Girl — depicting the emotional turmoil of the Middle East conflict through the instability and confusion of a single person?

Modernity thinks that all previous generations have been lacking in something; perhaps it is just arrogance to think that a “remake” can be better than the original, or is it merely a lack of creativity because the “now” is unable to come up with its own original ideas, and therefore must rely upon that which has already been done once — or twice, or three times before — with an effort to “improve” upon it?

To some extent, it is an inevitability of life’s misgivings, and so we all have to “remake” ourselves at some point in our lives.

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, the “remake” that must face is the one that is in real life: Medical conditions force one to remake one’s career, life choices and future plans.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits may not have been a “scene” in one’s life that was planned, but it has now become a necessity.  The movie reel within one’s life — the viewing of one’s future; how one sees one’s self; the “takes” that one shot of a career and a future — is forced to be remade when a medical condition hits one’s life.

Whether one wanted to or not, preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management becomes a necessity when a medical condition begins to prevent the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job.  It is like “remaking” one’s life.

Just remember, however, that like all remakes, it is important to have a good “director”, and seeking the counsel of a Federal Disability Retirement Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law is an important feature of the upcoming film adaptation and remake of the truest of moves: One’s Own Life.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Civil Service Disability Retirement Benefits: Human activity

The dizzying pace of it all defies comprehension.  We are, indeed, busy-bees, always engaged in this project, that protest, intervening in the affairs of others when our own are in such a state of disarray; up at it early in the morning and continuing until exhaustion sets in or wayward dementia in old age where even nursing homes impose human activity every night – bingo, dance, meditation, Tai Chi, family visitation day; not even a break for the aged.

Then, when we see those documentary films in foreign lands, of men taking hours to untangle the fishing net in preparation for the next day’s work; of sitting with family members in gathering for a meal; and of mountainous monasteries where gardening for supplemental food sources is an act of reflective repose, we wonder if the lives we live – so full of human activity supposedly for a purposeful end – is the only, the best, or the pinnacle of options left for us?

Did we ever choose the quantification of human activity we engage in?  Did we, at some point in our lives, sit down and say, Yes, I will accept to do that, agree to embrace this, and refuse all others?  Or, did the incremental, subtle and always insidious wave of requests, obligations and pressure to perform just overtake us, until one day we wake up in the middle of the night and recognize that our time is not our own, the human activity is without purpose or conscious constructiveness, and the projects we think are so dear to us, merely destroy and debilitate the human spirit?  That is the alienation talked about by Camus and the French Existentialists, is it not?

Human activity cannot be so senseless or purposeless; it must be to build, to advance, to secure for the future; and yet, as we lay in the quietude of nightly sweats, it becomes evident that we perform it for means otherwise intended.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to alienate one’s sense of mission and purpose from that of the priority that should be recognized – one’s health and the ability to have joy in life – the contradiction and conundrum is in “letting go” of that which has been a part of our lives for so long:  The job, the career path, the sense of “belonging” to a community of people who believe in the mission of the agency or the U.S. Postal Service.

Like barnacles clinging to the underside of a ship’s belly, we grapple and travel through life without quite knowing why, where we are going, or for what purpose we originally attached ourselves.

Preparing, formulating and filing 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 of CSRS Offset, is a way of:  A.  Recognizing the priority of health, B. Beginning the process of detaching ourselves as mere barnacles upon a ship’s underbelly, and C. Reflecting upon the course of one’s future.  Human activity is great and all – but it is the things we choose not to do that often define who we are in the hubbub of this mindless frenzy.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement from USPS or other Federal Agencies: Solomon’s choice

Even in this age of millennial ignorance of ancients, literary or biblical references to arcane metaphors (while taking delight in such useless information as the minutiae of Sanskrit grammar), the general view that King Solomon’s judgment was profoundly wise, is accepted without argument.  Yet, were his assumptions correct, and do they apply today?  Is it presumptively reasonable that love of child would rise above the other emotions felt – of jealousy, perhaps, or envy of the other mother – and declare the truth of the hidden motive?  Is there a priority or order of sequence that necessarily mandates truth to manifest itself, when the choice is one of death, loss, sacrifice and the horror of splitting a baby into two?

Of course, beyond the significance of the epic story itself, is the metaphor we are left with in living our daily lives – of making a choice between honor and its opposite, or of Truth and Falsity; of enduring for the sake of X as opposed to sacrificing in the light of Y.  To embrace a Solomon’s choice is to accept that there is a binary presentation in life’s offerings, and while that is often the appearance of a case, it is the stark reality of the limitations of alternatives available, that makes a decision to be made difficult and unenviable.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must endure and “deal with” a medical condition, such that the medical condition has come to a point of interference with many of life’s major activities, including employment and performing the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal position, the options presented are often binary, and sometimes adding another to create a trinity of choices.

The Federal or Postal employee can remain and endure; or, if the Federal or Postal employee has met the minimum eligibility requirements (18 months of creditable Federal Service and an evidentiary basis of showing that a medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job), consideration should be given to preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

The “other” choice, of course, is to walk away and do nothing; but that is, in effect, no choice at all, for the time invested and accrued in one’s Federal or Postal career should never be discarded and forgotten, especially when the second option is there to be accessed.

In the end, perhaps Solomon’s choice was, likewise, parallel to that “third” option which resulted in the decisions made, and as a consequence, bore the fruits for the future Trinity.  To split the baby in half could never have been a serious consideration, just like walking away without trying should rarely be considered by a Federal or Postal employee who suffers from a medical condition which prevents him or her from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job.  Solomon’s offer was, of course, a wise one; for, in the end, he knew that such a choice was an untenable one, just as the Federal or Postal employee knows that filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits is the one which will ultimately be the wise one.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement from Civil Service: Recognizing the best of times

Often, we mistake short-term travails with the chronic despair experienced by some.  In the midst of an experiential trauma, compounded by a lack of capacity to consider the limited perspective we find ourselves in, the enmeshment of the “now” without any insight for a better tomorrow, a future to behold nor a distance aglow with the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, inflames the inner Darwinian categories of instinctive responsiveness to merely survive.

In retrospect, one’s judgment on any particular day or time, or even of an event remembered, may be altered.  We may even point to that slice of life and state with aplomb, “It was actually the best of times.”  How often do we hear that when one harkens back to the starving days, when struggling was a daily commotion and worrying was but a common routine?

By contrast, such reverential references are rarely attributed to those periods where longevity of suffering cannot be measured, where the chronic nature of the pain cannot be determined, and where no promises can be made that tomorrow will be any better off, no matter what extent of effort is exerted, than the next day, or the day before, or the day after, or the time prior.  In such circumstances, change itself may be a necessary component in the search for a light of hope.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who daily struggle with fulfilling the positional requirements of one’s job, filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is often the best option available.

The concept itself – the “best of times” – is a relative one; we compare it to other memories where distance of time has not faded too radically a moment of the negative:  no (or lesser) pain; controlled depression; inability to remain sedentary for long; unable to bend, lift or reach repetitively; unable to engage in the physical requirements of the job; inability to have the requisite focus, concentration or work for any sustained period of time without the high distractibility of pain; these, and many more, constitute the foundational loss which may qualify the Federal or Postal employee to become eligible for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.

Perhaps, getting an approval from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management will not necessarily mean that the best of times still lay before one; but surely, whatever the future beholds, the chronic nature of one’s medical condition, the unbearable burden of the daily toil just to make it to work, cannot by any manner of the definition, even imply that the “best of times” resides in the present circumstances of choice.

Preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits is a choice of sorts; it is to recognize that there is, indeed, life after Federal Service or the U.S. Postal Service, and further, that recognizing the best of times involves movement forward and beyond, where the present circumstances of negative returns will likely never allow for a regeneration of that which keeps us stuck in the quicksand of daily toil.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement from OPM: Dreams, daydreams and nightmares

Of the first in this triplet trope, the concept can envision two distinct avenues:  in a state of somnolence, to have them with minimal control of appearance; or, in another sense, to possess aspirations beyond one’s station in life or current circumstances that may impute dissatisfaction.

The second in the series is somewhat connected to the second concept branching from the first; it is a moment of reflective escape, where the reality of “now” and the encounter with Being is temporarily averted and subsumed in a meditative silence of self-repose.  Some have the capacity to embrace and become lost in such quietude of an alternate universe, despite a clutter of noises or the distraction of tumult.  Then, some would counter that it is precisely in such moments that fleeing into a parallel universe of a mental cocoon is necessary in order to maintain one’s sanity in a world replete with a curiosity shop full of random violence.

And, of the third, we again branch into a duality with the proverbial fork in the road; for, such infamy of uncontrolled images and voices while in a sleeping slumber constitutes the primary definition; but, whether in metaphorical terms or engaging in trifling hyperbole, we attribute traumatic and frightful events by describing it precisely by the term at hand.

Dreams, daydreams and nightmares are all part of our daily lives, whether awake, half-aware, conscious or sub-conscious in multiple and mysterious modalities of living; but they serve a purpose which, whether explained away by psychologists, therapists, pseudo-intellectuals or just plain people of tremendous insights and uncanny foresights, they continue to remain the foundation for maintaining the sanity preserved within the insanity of the greater universe.

Without nightmares, how would the inner psyche expiate the images and sense datum we have involuntarily ingested?  Without daydreams, what would man hope for, live for, in circumstances of squalor and decadence?  And of dreams, how would the subconscious sift through the visual and information overload experienced daily and in voluminous onslaughts of quantitatively overwhelming constructs?

Or of the second branch, where aspirations and hope for a better tomorrow, though derailed by screams of destitution and unhinged by crying babies, drunken realities and unsavory circumstances, yet to dream for a better tomorrow is sometimes the only thread which separates the crumbling heart from a tinge of a fading smile.  It is precisely these that allows for man to wake up the next morning and seek a better tomorrow.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who find themselves with shattered dreams, escaping into a greater cauldron of daydreaming, or rustling in sleepless fits of nightmares unavailing, all because one’s career is on the proverbial “line” resulting from a medical condition which may cut short one’s dreams, daydreams and creating a chaos of nightmares, preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, may be the first step in the aspirational discourse needed to regain one’s equilibrium.

The importance of trifurcating between dreams, daydreams and nightmares is a prescient step towards recognizing that the reality of one’s present circumstances may be described as a “nightmare”, and perhaps those sleepless nights are filled with them; but in order for the Federal or Postal employee to dream of a better tomorrow, the leisure of daydreaming must be allowed, but always tempered by pragmatic steps which must be undertaken in the reality of day-to-day living, in order to reach a specific goal:  That of getting an approval from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, in order to reach that light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, which is neither defined by dreams, nor attained by daydreaming, and certainly not a nightmare to avoid.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire