OPM Federal Disability Retirement: Not Unhappy

There is the state of “being happy”; conversely, of “being unhappy”; but what of the neutral sense?  Can you be in a state of “being not unhappy” and, if so, what could it mean?  Is it a neutral mood — sort of like an emotional purgatory where you are neither happy nor unhappy, but of a state of measured deliberation, where most of us are throughout the greater slice of our lives?

Modernity demands the first; to experience episodes of the second state of emotional constitution is to somehow have something “wrong” going on; for, the cottage industry of “be happy” is devised to manipulate and commercialize a state of natural being which has been artificially characterized as a “negative”, and given the greater multitude of herd instincts and the inculcated belief that there is something wrong if you are either “not happy” or “unhappy”, it goes without saying that any “neutral” state of being is likewise unacceptable.

Yet, most of life is of a state of medium; and the archaic, arcane Western Tradition of the Aristotelian “middle way” — where neither extremes of emotions are the preferred stage, but rather, a governance of the appetitive nature by the intellect and reason constitute the near-perfect character — has long been abandoned, and now deemed unattractive.  But reality, in the end, has a way of creeping back into our lives, and the state of being “not unhappy” is where most of us remain, cottage industries of “being happy” notwithstanding.

For Federal and Postal employees who are unhappy, and wish to get back to the purgatory of humanity by being not unhappy because of a medical condition which impedes and interferes with his or her life, both professionally and personally, it may be necessary to consider filing for Federal Employee Disability benefits under the current Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS), through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Neither chronic happiness nor persistent unhappiness are the natural states of Man; rather, the goal is to reach that purgatory of emotions — of being not unhappy — and it may be that, to reach that state of being, Federal Disability Retirement is an option to consider.

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.

 

Medical Retirement Benefits for US Government Employees: A Slice of Paradise

Hank Worden played Moses Harper as the irritating sidekick alongside John Wayne in The Searchers.  At the end, he merely wanted a rocking chair to sit in, and rock the days and dusks away in view of the landscape’s beauty which told the story of the human narrative: of struggle, life and death; of wars and massacres; of the history of human inhumanity.

Perhaps that was his idea of a slice of paradise.  Everyone possesses a concept of it; for some, it is simple and fundamental; for others, complex and encapsulating endless greed.  Maybe it is just a place of your own on a mountaintop; a house in a quiet neighborhood; a family, or not; or a multi-million dollar mansion with wide and endless swaths of acreage.

Whatever constitutes one’s idea of a slice of paradise, that is what we live for.  For some, also, it is the negation of something.  We take for granted our health, and when we lose it, our idea of a slice of paradise is altered profoundly: For those in chronic pain, it is the negation or lessening of that pain; for those with anxieties and panic attacks and depression, just to get through the day without a breakdown.

For Federal employees and Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS may come closest to a realistic conception of a slice of paradise: For an opportunity to have some respite from the daily stresses of the workplace and attend to the priorities which envelope one’s daily life — the medical condition itself, which reveals that the fall of Adam and Eve, indeed, sliced paradise forever and a day.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

FERS Disability Retirement: The Expression of Man

Work is the expression of Man; whether as an explosion of creativity or a grimace from overdoing it, it is an extension of that which is inherent and natural.  Whether in building or deconstructing; of newness or of a renovation; perhaps as part-time or beyond a full-time schedule; the expression of men and women is to work.

We often make up sub-categories of it — of a “career” as opposed to a “job”; a “professional” or an amateur; of a “white collar” position in contradistinction to a “blue collar” worker; but in the generic aggregate, it is all “work”.  Look all around us; the product of work, of Man — men, women, old and young — engaging in the building of a society in bits and pieces, expressing themselves by manner of an activity that takes various forms, multiple hands and countless ideas.  To cease to work is tantamount to stopping that which is the natural expression of Man.

That is why, when a medical condition begins to prevent and impact a person’s ability and capacity to perform all of the essential elements his or her Federal or Postal job, it may be time to consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS.

Consult with an OPM Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and begin the process of extending the natural expression of Man — by allowing for such creativity and expression to present itself in another vocation outside of the Federal government.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement Benefits: The person I once knew

We all carry about that image of who we once were; or, perhaps of many of the person we once knew.  Which memory-bank do we wash upon, once the shores of present images dissipate and the lapping waves of bygone days have begun to fade, like the vestiges of old photographs submitting to time’s ravages in the decay of life’s cycles of natural degradation?

The person I once knew — was it of the boy who sat upon a beach and giggled as the foam of gentle waves sang upon the tickling bare feet?  Or the teenager who had acted like a fool and allowed for regrets to shadow one’s conscience for having been unkind to the unpopular girl who later turned into the beautiful swan and sang the merriment of forlorn days away?  Or of the young man or woman who had hopes and unlimited dreams that somehow were closeted for a future time, never to be reopened to dust them off when the opportunities had come and gone?

The person I once knew was the one who defied danger and laughed in the face of a greasy cheeseburger, but now is fearful of the next health crisis and the pain that wrings the neck of a squawking chicken.

For the Federal or Postal employee who suffers from a medical condition where the medical condition begins to prevent the Federal or Postal worker’s ability and capacity to continue to perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, it is no longer important to consider the person whom once I knew, but rather, the person who will move forward into the future.

Preparing, formulating and filing 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 an indication that the greater importance of one’s future self is being recognized as opposed to the person I once knew, thus allowing for the past to be buried in favor of a future still bright with tomorrow’s promises.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Early OPM Retirement for Medical Incapacity: The many tomorrows yet to come

Does hope lie fallow when the basket of tomorrows become numbered too few?  When endless tomorrows lay before one’s imagination, too numerous to count that one need not bother, does that purport to show that one has a great quantity of hope, or merely that youth’s folly allows for a carefree tomorrow where an eternity of tomorrows can never be reduced to a handful beyond a few todays?  Can time and incremental portions of divided moments be quantified in that manner?

That has always been an anomaly for the undersigned writer — the quantification of time, as in the manner that religious beliefs are scoffed at when it comes to the story of genesis.  For, those who hold to the strict construction and literal meaning of the timeline of how old the earth is, count the obscure generational extensions of people who lived in former times, and somehow declare that the world is X-amount of years old.  How one can calculate with precision that which is not explicitly stated is a conundrum in and of itself, leaving aside the issue of whether time can be quantified if the order of the planetary system and our specific galactic orbit had not yet been established.

Evolutionists, of course, contend that the world was clearly created billions of years ago.  To both, the question is:  Tell me the logical difference between the following 2 statements — 1. The world was created a long time ago, and 2. The world was created billions of years ago.  Do humans have the capacity to imagine time beyond the present moment, or perhaps yesterday or a couple of days ago?  What does it mean to say to a person, “A type of human being walked the earth 10 million years ago”?  One can barely remember where one has placed the screwdriver used last week, and yet people want to put some significance upon a belief-system that purports to quantify time.

Ultimately, the question of whether one believes that the earth is a mere 10,000 years old, or billions of years in the making, is not a factual or scientific one; it is, a political condemnation that categorizes a person’s religious belief into a bifurcated system of: Is he/she “scientific” or “religious”?  In the end, time cannot be so easily quantified; rather, it is a basis of hope and an anticipation of a future yet to be resolved.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents the Federal and Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of the Federal position, time often becomes paralyzed, much like our imagined world of dinosaurs and prehistoric images of those Pleistocene eras and beyond; and as time is unable to be made meaningful except in the here and now — by imagining the many tomorrows yet to come — preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application that lets you project a life beyond the present-day circumstances of pain, medical conditions and deteriorating health, is the singular differentiating way that humans can separate themselves from other species: with hope.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement Legal Representation: Paradoxes

Quine, probably the greatest logician since Bertrand Russell, notes that paradoxes often occur as a result of presumed beliefs otherwise left unstated, and once they are “fleshed out” through query and made explicit via closer scrutiny and analysis, the portion which befuddles often disappears.  Confusion within a language game, of course, is often a large part of it, and certain unstated preconditions and assumed facts otherwise implicit and hidden will leave the stated portion incomplete such that others must come along and unravel the mystery.

In a similar vein, statements made as “necessarily” so also retain unstated presumptions.  Thus, if we claim that “the sun will rise tomorrow”, we are asserting that it is “necessarily so”.  If a child asks, “Why is that so”, we will often revert to nothing more than Hume’s response that because it has always risen in the past, and the revolution of planets and rotation of the earth around the sun has been a reliable compass upon which we can depend, it is the regularity of events in the past that determine the necessary expectation of repetition for the future.

It is, then, those unstated or “hidden” presumptions that made certain statements and claims unclear, and the job of an attorney is to clarify that which is left in a muddle.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, where it becomes necessary to file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the questions surrounding paradoxes and necessity can be important.

Medical conditions can certainly be paradoxes.  Without explanation, they can debilitate, progressively deteriorate and impact a person’s ability and capacity to continue on as before.  Even with a medical diagnosis, prescribed course of treatment and sometimes surgical intervention, they may remain a befuddlement because of a lack of knowledge or explanation.

Having such a medical condition may nevertheless require that the Federal or Postal employee file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits because the Federal or Postal employee is no longer able to perform one or more of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal job.  The filing itself becomes a “necessity”.

The gap between the paradox of the medical condition and the necessity of filing a Federal Disability Retirement application through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management becomes quite clear: Necessity does not equal entitlement, and the paradox must be proven.  In doing so, implicit facts must be explained and explicated, and more than an argument of “because it has always been so” will have to be put forward to persuade OPM of the viability of one’s case.

To that extent, do not allow for concealed and presumed “facts” to defeat your Federal Disability Retirement application, and never allow your statement of facts to remain a paradox, lest it become “necessary” to engage further steps of appealing the Federal Disability Retirement process in pursuance of an approval from OPM.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement from Federal Government Employment: Forms, Formats and Conformity

Forms rule; formats pervade; conformity to previously formatted forms are imposed both by the forms themselves, as well as through the delimiting presentation proposed by the formatted appearance.

Forms represent bureaucratization of an industry once known as a mere whippersnapper, but which now has grown into a behemoth and overpowers all with its industrial strength and dominance.  Formats demanded by such Leviathans of leveraged leaders in lapidary loquaciousness lead leftovers left scratching lonesome and lackluster lilliputians (leaving aside luckless left-handed leeches left to lollygagging lamentably).  Conformity by all others reflects the power of forms and formats, as everyone wants to be like everyone else, and rebels who defy the standards of sameness threaten the very essence and structure of a society comfortable with a herd-like mentality.

Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers know this concept well; for, while youth may enter into the Federal Sector or the U.S. Postal Service with grand ideas of “conquering the world” with “new and innovative” ideas never before thought of (why is it that the young believe that they alone came up with the idea of a wheel, or that defying one’s parents is something that cave-teenagers never engaged previously in epochs long forgotten?), it takes but a mere few years before the spirits are dampened and the fury of imaginative flames are extinguished.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal Service workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition necessitates preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, encounter with, and confrontation of, another set of “forms” with a specific “format” which must follow a baseline “conformity” must again be faced.

Most Federal and Postal workers are under the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) and must complete two series of forms for purposes of filing for Federal Disability Retirement:  SF 3107 series, including the Application for Immediate Retirement and Schedules A, B & C; as well as the SF 3112 series, along with the onerous “Statement of Disability” as formatted in SF 3112A. For those rare dinosaurs under the Civil Service Retirement System, the SF 3107 series is not for you, but rather, it is the SF 2801 (when are you all going to fade away so that the government can save some money by throwing aside those forms?).

Just remember this:  Forms are formatted for a specific purpose; and while conformity is necessary in order for streamlining in favor of an overworked bureaucracy, in the end, the purpose of all three — forms, formats and conformity to the first two — is to achieve an end-goal, and in preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through OPM, that achievement is attained by getting the necessary proof and documentation over to OPM, in order to get an approval of one’s Federal Disability Retirement application, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS-Offset.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement under FERS: Life’s Work

There is, then, the job or career we undertake (the distinction between the two is often lost, and depends in large part upon a multiplicity of factors, including length of commitment, opportunity within a given field for growth and advancement; whether any qualifications, certifications or professional degrees are required, etc.); and then, the conditions and context of participating in a greater culture of our choosing, including where we live, with whom we live, what social circles we expand into; as well as how we interact with the extended community surrounding us, and whether we even decide to abide by the rules, laws and limitations imposed by society.

The former constitutes the work we engage during our lifetimes; the latter, the macro-aspect of the work generally confronted during a lifetime.  We often confuse the two.  The conundrum and internal turmoil comes about because so much of the latter often depends upon the success of the former.  Without the wealth amassed through the work of labor, we become limited in the choices we have in the work of living; thus do some choose a life of crime or cheating, as a means of shortcutting and supplementing the former for the latter.  And when the work of labor is cut short, or somehow interrupted, one realizes the impact upon the greater work of life, and must adjust accordingly.

For the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal worker who suffers from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to impact one’s work or career, the choice to leave the Federal sector is a difficult one, and not just because of the financial considerations which reverberate upon the greater work of living.  Often, the choice to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is paused for reflection, procrastination and further delay, because the two concentric circles of life have overlapped to such an exponential degree that one cannot easily be bifurcated from the other.

One’s work of labor involved the social circle; it intersected with the greater percentage of daily living; the meaning and teleological motivation was commingled; even some of the neighbors work in the same neighborhood, just down the street, in our town (yes, it is an unabashed reference to Thornton Wilder’s famous play), or perhaps even next door; so, how can I face a change from the work of labor, without confronting the greater vicissitude in the work of life? But then, there is that medical condition, and it is always the interrupting reality of the medical condition which must, by necessity, be focused upon.

Better to make decisions now, when one has the option to do so concerning the work of labor, lest the limitations are imposed by others, which then can have irreparable consequential reverberations upon the greater work of living.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement Attorney: Incremental Destruction

It is the slow, destructive force of incrementalism which presents the greater danger in life.  Most people can respond to a full-blown crisis; those are events where the human chemistry of adrenaline flow and reactive thoughtlessness results in heroic acts as told in epic narratives.  But what of the slow and deliberate acts of daily sniping?  How well do we respond, and in civil discourse where physical challenge to such cowardly encounters is no longer acceptable, what does one do?

For the Federal employee and the U.S. Postal worker who must contend daily with supervisors, co-workers, managers, etc., in the deliberative incrementalism of destructive criticism, heightened hostility, and the slow churning of pressure by the drip-drip method of administrative sanctions, actions and reprimands, the cost of remaining in an atmosphere of toxicity is high, indeed.

When the medical condition begins to impact the capacity and ability to perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties, the Federal agency and the U.S. Postal Service engages in a fairly routine manner of acting — of ostracizing, impeding and obstructing.

One would think that, with all of the laws and public awareness concerning disability discrimination, that society — and especially the Federal sector — would be sensitive in the treatment of Federal and Postal employees who suffer from a medical condition; but, alas, civilization rarely progresses in response to genteel laws reflecting intellectual advancement; rather, they remain within the constraints of the origin of one’s species (hint:  the reference is to the Darwinian paradigm of evolutionary determinism).

Filing for Federal or Postal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is often the best choice remaining for Federal or Postal workers who must contend with the incrementalism of sure destruction.  For, in the end, one must always reflect upon the priority of values — of health, continuation in a toxic environment, and whether it is worth it in the end.

It may be years before the adverse effects surface, or mere months; but that is the legend of the age-old torture methods which are most effective; the ones who administer the pain have all the time in the world; it is the victim who must live with the consequences.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire