OPM Disability Retirement under FERS: Shame

Shame was once thought to be a valuable societal tool.  While not replacing laws, it often preempted the need for legislative enactments passed to curtail certain unwanted behaviors.  A society without shame is one which prompts and necessitates a state of unlimited laws attempting to regulate the population.

For, a society with traditions, including a general consensus regarding long-standing and known actions which have been deemed “shameful”, requires fewer laws, because self-regulation is performed through a community of unspoken and subtle repressions by mere looks, grimaces, and wordless expressions of contempt and condemnation.

Here in America, sometime in the late Sixties and throughout the Seventies, a quiet movement developed, which was anathema to shame.  We decided that the primary goal in raising children was to make sure that each child developed something obscurely indefinable and named it, “Self-Esteem”.  Shame, of course, was considered an emotion which did not help to indoctrinate or inculcate this thing called “self-esteem”, and so a concurrent movement developed: The campaign to stamp out anything and everything which might trigger a child’s having a sense of shame.

As a result, here we are today — everyone is a winner; nobody has more talent than anyone else; we are all the best that we can be; and whether you stink at something, you should still receive some sort of an award.

Yet, despite all of the educational nonsense and malpractice (Note: during the same period, some Harvard educators decided that learning to read by phonetics needed to be replaced by something called a “whole word” approach, until it became apparent that illiteracy became rampant and reading comprehension turned into a joke; but the trend is now being reversed and “phonetics” — a learning approach which worked for hundreds of years — has finally come back!  Another disastrous trend initiated in the Sixties and Seventies) perpetrated upon our kids, somehow, shame still continues to rear its ugly head in various sectors of our society.

At least, that is true of the “older” generation — like Federal and Postal employees under FERS, who try and hide their medical conditions because they feel a sense of shame that they cannot perform at the same level they are used to.

No need to feel such shame.  Go with the flow of the Sixties and Seventies, and contact a FERS Retirement Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and quit being silly — shame is something of the past, never to rear its ugly head, except maybe in unenlightened countries like Japan — a country where accomplishment is still recognized, and no, not everyone gets a prize just for showing up.

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.

 

Postal and Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Progressive Deterioration

We witness it in others — in our parents; in ourselves, we “feel” it more than see it, as we don’t visually view ourselves in the mirror or observe our own reflections as a third party; and in a community, sometimes we are witness to either ends of the spectrum — of the slow crumbling and abandonment or the “gentrification” of a neighborhood; and in the greater society, the progressive deterioration, of a loss of commonality and retraction of civil behavior, etc.

Progressive deterioration is also how a medical condition “works” — of an incremental, almost imperceptible loss of function, lessening of efficacy, regression of capacity.  Then, there comes a point where such loss no longer allows a person to perform in the same manner as he or she once was capable of.  People compensate in various ways to overcome such deterioration, almost always, however, at a further cost to one’s body or mind.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition has reached a point where the progressive deterioration no longer allows you to perform one or more of the essential functions of your position, contact a disability attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement and consider the option of leaving that phase of your career behind, and moving forward to apply those other functions in a different capacity.

Progressive deterioration is rarely one of complete devastation; not of totality, but of partial loss and lessening.

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 for FERS Federal and Postal Employees: Paralysis

It is the complete and total inability, whether by physical incapacity or mental breakdown, to engage and maneuver within and throughout the world.  Partial paralysis is just that — of some but not all.  The spectrum on which a medical condition can fall is determined by the severity of that paralysis — Can you do some, but not all, of the essential elements of the duties required in your position description?

Most people who have an injury or a psychiatric condition do not suffer from total paralysis, but from partial — and still can remain productive, but in a lesser capacity.

That is why Federal Disability Retirement allows the Federal or Postal worker who has successfully obtained a Federal Disability Retirement annuity to go out into the private sector, state, county or local government, and make up to 80% of what your former position currently pays — because, as stated previously, most people are not beset with complete and total paralysis, but merely some partial form.

All medical conditions, whether physical or psychiatric, have an impact tantamount to a form of paralysis; however, not all medical conditions are equal, and some allow for further productivity beyond the point where the medical condition becomes a chronic, permanent condition.

Contact a disability lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and don’t allow the medical condition — that “paralysis of life” — to prevent you from moving on in your life.

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.

 

Postal & Federal Employees with Disabilities: Getting Started

Your eyes are closed but you are awake; the problem is getting started.  You sit and do all sorts of other work, but not the one which has a hard deadline or is the most important one; the problem is getting started.  There are multiple projects which have been left undone, or have not even seen the fruits of beginning labor; the problem is getting started.  You get the idea; no, you are not alone in the problem of getting started.

If procrastination is the locked door and motivation is the supposed key, the problem still remains when the chasm between vision and action remains untethered.

Medical conditions conspire to vanquish all of the logical arguments we make in our own heads: It’ll get better; maybe the Agency won’t notice that things aren’t getting done; people will understand; coworker’s know I have a medical condition, so I’m sure they’ll be empathetic; and on and on, we allow for the medical condition and the lack of getting started to somehow be left on the roadside as so much human detritus as litters the mind with scattered thoughts.  But we know it cannot go on forever.

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 too often that point — of “getting started” — which prevents and delays what has already become necessary.

Call a Federal Medical Retirement Lawyer and start the OPM Disability Retirement process of getting started by allowing the Federal Employee Disability Retirement Attorney to get started for you.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Government Employee Medical Retirement: Charting a Course

Will such a need vanish because of our dependence upon technology?

The concept itself is becoming stranger by the minute; for, there are GPS mechanisms which perform all such work for us.  We need no longer “chart a course”, because we merely have to input the information and the technology does it for us.  But does dependence upon technology interfere with the skills needed for development in a world which sometimes encounters error and break-downs?

Certainly, cars and other gadgets have become too complex for us to tinker with on a Saturday afternoon.  Have you recently looked under the hood of a new car?  Where do you even begin?

Children of modernity can’t even find their way home without relying upon a GPS system, leaving aside trying to even change the oil on a car.  “Charting a Course” is likely an outdated system, as well.

But for Federal and Postal employees who need to file for Federal Disability Retirement, charting the correct course in preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS is a crucial first step.  For, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is in existence to try and derail the charted course, and that is why consulting with an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law is an important first step in charting a course which will lead to a successful result.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement Representation: The problem perspective

Does “positive thinking” actually work?  Or, is it one of those pithy approaches to life, where the “throwaway” line is used to dismiss unpleasantries and negative influences that might otherwise disprove the obvious — that life is difficult enough without listening to the difficulties of others?  Then, there is the “problem perspective” — of seeing everything as a problem as opposed to a solution or opportunity, and to see the world as a glass half-empty in contradistinction to a half-full universe.

Objectively, of course, both descriptions reflect the same objective reality; the contention is that “how” we view the world (i.e., our subjective perspective upon the world around us) influences the manner in which we approach the objective world in deliberating, solving, resolving, tackling problems, embracing situations, etc.

The “problem perspective” describes a person who sees everything from the vantage point of a problem.  It is all well and good, of course, to speak about having a “positive” frame of mind when things are going well; it is when actual, objective problems and difficulties arise in one’s life, that the “real test” of whether “positive thinking” works comes into question.

Objectively, of course, one could argue that, whether one possesses a “positive” mindset, a “negative” perspective, or a somewhat neutral approach, the outside world (that “noumenal” universe that Kant referred to) cares not a twit about what we “think” (i.e., the phenomenal universe that Kant distinguished — the one that we actually have access to) about it — for, it still exists whether we have a positive, negative or neutral perspective, anyway.

It is when the objective world impinges upon the subjective perspective with an undeniable negation of the positive — as in, a medical condition that debilitates and makes for a painful existence, whether physically or cognitively — that the test of whether a “positive” outlook works, or whether a “negative” perspective makes a difference, tests our daily 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 Federal or Postal job, the approach one takes may indeed make a difference with a real distinction.  Yes, the end of one’s Federal or Postal career may be coming; and, yet, the Federal Agency or the U.S. Postal Service may well move to terminate you based upon your growing inability to perform one or more of the essential elements of your Federal or Postal job.

In the end, such a “problem perspective” is a very real one, and becomes a problem precisely because there is a combination of both the “objective” world (the medical condition itself) and the “subjective” one (what to do about it; the next steps to be taken; the decision to be made, etc.).

Preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, may not only be the best “next step” to take — it may be the “only” one in the sense that all other options are undesirable: to stay and suffer; to resign and walk away without doing anything; or to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

In the end, all “problem perspectives” need a positive solution, and preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application is the best and positive solution for a Federal or Postal employee needing to resolve the problem perspective where one’s medical condition no longer allows for the fulfillment of all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal position.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: Something happened

Beyond a mundane declaration of befuddlement, it is also the title of a novel by Joseph Heller — his second novel published some 13 years after the successful first one that most people remember him by:  Catch-22.

It lacks the surrealism of the first novel; the absurdity of tragic events unfolding distinguishable from the logical and sequential manner in which we see the world, turned upside down by images of madness countering the reality of the insanity around.  The genre of the absurd — depicted in such movies as “Life is Beautiful” and in works such as Catch-22 — attempts to unveil the underlying insanity beneath the veneer of a world acting as if normalcy abounds.

Other movies that attempt to portray the absurd might include Sophie’s Choice, where the main character (played by Meryl Streep) keeps going back to the comfort of her insane boyfriend because that is the more comfortable reality she knows, having survived the insanity of the Nazi death camps.

But long before the genre of the absurd came to the fore, there was the brilliant short story by Cynthia Ozick entitled, The Shawl, which has been noted for bringing out the horrors of the holocaust through a medium — the short story — that captures the essence of absurdity and the surreal in a mere few dozen pages.  The story is a small bundle that reverberates so powerfully that it overshadows any subsequent attempts at depicting life’s absurdity.

Catch-22 elevated the absurd to a consciousness that brought further self-awareness of the unreality of the real — the Vietnam War — and tried to unravel the insanity amidst a world that tried to explain the event as something logical and sane.

Something Happened —  a book about a character who engages in a rambling stream of consciousness about his childhood, job and family — is perhaps more emblematic about the life most of us live:  seemingly logical, yet interspersed with events, reminiscences and memories that are faulty at best, and far from perfect.  The title itself shows a greater awareness of our befuddlement — of not knowing “what” happened, only that it did, and the inability to control the events that impact our lives.

Medical conditions tend to be of that nature — of an event that we have no control over, and yet, we are aware of its “happening”.  For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have come to realize that something happened — a medical condition; a chronic illness that simply will not go away; a traumatic event that has had residual consequences which are continuing to impact; whatever the “something”, the “happened” part still resides.

Such recognition of the “something” will often necessitate the further recognition that it is now time to prepare, formulate and file an effective OPM Disability Retirement application, to be filed through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, in order to secure a future that is presently uncertain.

Consult with an experienced attorney who specializes in getting Federal and Postal employees Federal Disability Retirement benefits, and take the necessary steps to ensure that the “something” that “happened” is not one more tragedy in this tragic-comic stream of consciousness we call “life”.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire 
OPM Medical Disabilities Retirement Attorney

  

Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: The ‘Why’ of life

Why do we do that which we do?  Do other species engage in such reflective self-assessments, or do they just perform the act without positing the query?  Or course, there is the antecedent question of whether the question itself is asked in the linguistic modality which we embrace; or, is there another form of a more subtle nature that other animals correlate and learn from without a long utterance ending with a grammatical interrogative?

Perhaps, in the mere instinctive alteration of actions future-oriented displays the capacity of other species to “learn” from past mistakes and potential dangers allowed by careless indifference, and such changes in behavior itself by fiat already answers the query of ‘why’.  Thus, the question asked in the silence of one’s subtle modification in behavioral psychology constitutes, for other species, that self-assessment, and the mere fact that a public declaration is not made, does not necessarily prove that we are unique because we persistently ask such questions without ever answering them.

Is that why human folly persists through the ages, perennially, without alteration, without revealing any wisdom gained, understanding embraced or comprehension manifested?  Do we think that because we ask the question itself, without ever coming to a consensus of answers, that we are therefore more sophisticated, more intelligent and wiser than our earthly companions as well as our predecessors?  Is a question unanswered of any value if we never gain any knowledge or greater comprehension of the universe within which we occupy, merely because of the asking or the utterance of the interrogative?

Language often becomes the “stopper” – that appearance and semblance of an act which is merely an utterance of inactivity, but because of the significance and relevance which we place upon it, is often and mistakenly thought of as an accomplishing feat.  Misjudging mere words in the interrogative form for substantive sincerity of actions often leads to inertia and being stuck in the mud of life.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are suffering 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 question asked will often paralyze, and the ‘Why’ that is never answered can invite one upon the treadmill that never goes anywhere.

It is the step beyond the question that makes all the difference, and 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 the substantive answer that follows upon the perennial question that is never answered, never satisfied, and forever posited:  Why?

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire