OPM Disability Retirement under FERS: When We Were Young

When we were young, we used to think that good health would last forever.  When we were young, taking risks was not such a big deal, because we really thought of ourselves as invincible beings.  When we were young, we figured that tomorrow was just a concept applicable to very old people, and that today was the only tense that mattered.  When we were young, old age, sickness, pain, being limited by the deterioration of our bodies — that was something that the “other person” experienced; not me.

When we were young, the future was always bright, the past was merely a fuzzy yesterday, and today was as promising as the North Star that twinkled upon the eternal promise of our own strengths.  When we were young, life was a limitless opportunity which never had the word “never” in it.

You get the idea.  We were all once young, and foolish in our beliefs.  Life, in the end, is a lesson of humility, and as one grows older, reality tempers the foolishness we once embraced.

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 one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, contact a Federal Disability Retirement Lawyer and consider whether or not FERS Disability Retirement is an option for you.

Yes, when we were young, such an option was not even a consideration; but when we are older, wisdom tells us that not everything we wish for, do we get, and not every option can we “go it alone”, and sometimes having an aggressive advocate to fight for your rights — a FERS Disability Retirement Lawyer — is what being older teaches us: Of having some sense and wisdom.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS OPM Medical Retirement: The Haphazard Approach

The dual root foundations in the word itself imply a dangerous and directionless lack of methodology; for the “hap” is derived from the Old Norse word, “happ”, meaning “good luck” or chance occurrence, while the term “hazard” connotes danger and potential disaster.  The combination of the two form a compound word of sorts: of an event or action which lacks planning, order or direction.

The haphazard approach is one where a person engages in an activity or initiates an act without a plan, lacking in a methodology of discourse, and does it “on the fly”.  Perhaps one can get away with such an implementation for certain inconsequential activities, projects and ventures; but this is a world where competition and “beating each other out” is inherent in almost all phases and aspects of living.

It might be okay to engage in a haphazard approach when “funning around” with your kids, or even in going out with friends.  Not everything needs a plan; but in life, having a plan —a formulated approach that develops through thoughtfulness and deliberation of intent — is helpful.

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, it is perhaps a “fact” that the medical condition itself is a “haphazard” event — one which hits you without any plan or expectation.  How we deal with the medical condition, however, should never be a haphazard event, and preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, should not be ventured in a haphazard manner.

Consult with a Federal Disability Lawyer who specializes in FERS Disability Retirement Law and don’t let the winds of chance determine your future; instead, develop a cogent, coherent plan for the future and prepare for a planned battle with OPM to assert and obtain your rightful benefits.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: The Lie of Agnosticism

Bertrand Russell was famous for it (who would not be — of a tall, slender intellectual with a shock of white hair with that image of a long-stemmed pipe puffing with short bursts of tobacco smoke trailing pervasively behind between haltingly muttered sentences of profound logical confusions?); most of us are lulled into it; and the unwary may think that it is a more intellectually honest position to take, where neutrality stuck between traditionalists and the fervency of iconoclasm is preferable if only because avoidance of unpleasantries often directs of intents and motivations.

Yet, look beneath the surface: Russell certainly wrote and lectured enough against the existence of a supernatural being, as opposed to advocating on behalf of evidence supporting the existence of God.  Countless essays and arguments critical of the illogic inherent in Aquinas’ famous “5 Arguments” or Anselm’s Ontological Argument and — of more modern vintage, Kurt Godel’s formal argument (that is if we can even understand the mathematically complex propositions posited by Godel, who stands apart, along with his friend Einstein, in comprehending the mysteries of the universe) are propounded by Russell, with nary a sentence in support.

Most agnostics are atheists; they just don’t want to be bothered by being confronted with that fact.

Medical conditions are like the clinging to agnosticism: We want to avoid the direct assault and confrontation, and so we keep procrastinating, avoiding and delaying.  Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS is like the conversion of an agnostic to the reality of atheism, or its antonym: The reality of recognizing that we can no longer avoid.

Consult with an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law; at a minimum, you can see whether you are truly an agnostic, or merely ensconced in the Lie of Agnosticism.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement under FERS & CSRS: The old man

There is a recognition — born of the enlightenment period in American History referred to merely as “The Sixties” — when a cultural adage was created, which went something like: “Age is not the sequence of years, but of a state of mind”.  Yes, those “Sixties” will one day be looked upon by historians and cultural commentators as that likened to “The Renaissance”, or “The Dark Ages”, or perhaps some other hiccup of historical divisions that bifurcates the “before” and “after” of enlightenment, tumultuous alterations and societal-tectonic shifts of some significance.

The Old Man (without the appendage of “and the Sea”, a reference obviously to the classic novel by Hemingway, who somewhat embodied the end of a Pre-Sixties era where machismo, big-game hunting and the “strong, silent type” was replaced with “sensitivity”, environmental protection and therapeutic sharing) is still regarded by an archetype of sticking to old ways, becoming intractable and clinging to conservatism in thought and actions.

Perhaps that is natural — as one degenerates upon a progressive scale of a downward turn, as on a scale of molecular deterioration leading to eventual decay and death — in that vicissitudes of major proportions can only be tolerated well by the young.  Yet, there is a truth to that old “Sixties adage”, that one’s attitude towards life in general, responsiveness to stimuli and new experiences, is always important in countering the staid phenomena of old age and becoming old.

Medical conditions, of course, can change everything — all at once.  If of physical ailments, one can feel like a young person in a cocoon of ancient origins or, if beset with psychiatric conditions, the disorienting phenomena of psychological trauma can leave one aged while locked into a young body.

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, it often feels like “the old man (or woman)” has arrived before his or her time.  We tend to focus too much upon historical shifts of tectonic proportions, when what really matters is the individual and the compelling narrative of singular lives.

Filing a Federal Disability Retirement application through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management may not have any great cultural impact upon history’s retrospective purview, but for the individual Federal or Postal employee who can no longer perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, it is as important to prepare and formulate an effective OPM Disability Retirement packet as if one is entering a great tectonic shift.

A Federal Disability Retirement application is a significant event in the life of every Federal and Postal employee, and consultation with an attorney is a near “must” in order to get it prepared properly and efficiently.  As for “The Old Man (or Woman)” that one is afraid of being tagged as because it is time to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through OPM — leave that up to the cultural and historical commentators; it is individual lives that matter, and not the footnotes which are forgotten within the morass of vague historical references.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement under FERS & CSRS: Persistence versus giving up

The latter should never be an option, although it is too often contemplated; and the former requires either a dull sense of reality or an in-born stubbornness that refuses to acknowledge defeat.  Both are often the result of the countermanding characteristic of the opponent who relies upon the fact that a certain percentage of the population either lacks the characteristic of persistence or otherwise will ultimately give up with nary an effort or will to fight on.

How many battles in history’s billfold of forgotten memories resulted in defeat because of a ruse portrayed by the enemy?  It is the bold pretension that tests the resolve and allows for victory or defeat; the knowledge that there will always be a certain number of people who, upon facing any resistance or adversity, will simply “give up” and surrender.  Thus is it left up to those who will persist no matter the challenge, where adversity and contention will be endured no matter the cost.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who enter the arena of a Federal Disability Retirement process, one should always expect and prepare each stage “as if” the battle at the next stage will ensue.  If a denial is issued by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management for a Federal Disability Retirement application, of course it is going to be written and conveyed “as if” the case never had a chance, “as if” none of the medical evidence had any relevance or significance, and “as if” you don’t even come near to meeting the criteria for eligibility for Federal Disability Retirement.

By sounding “as if” you never had a chance and failed miserably to meet any and all legal criteria for eligibility, OPM is banking on your lack of persistence and the concomitant reaction of simply giving up.

However, persistence is the key to success, and giving up is merely a prelude to a victory near at hand if only one steps back, takes a deep breath, and realizes that, from the very beginning, Federal Disability Retirement was never going to be an easy road to bear — but a consultation with an experienced attorney may well lift the burden of the beast where persistence is the key and not giving up is the pathway to a successful outcome at the next stage of the administrative process called “Federal Disability Retirement”.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement from OPM: The warmth of a thought

Does it even make sense to cross over between tactile-based sensations and conceptual transmissions?  We’ve heard variations of that muddle — of how a thought brings warmth to one’s body; meaning, thereby, that there is a causal connection between a thought and a subsequent sensation, as in, “I was sitting there one evening thinking about my childhood, sitting on my grandfather’s lap when a secure feeling of warmth overcame me”.

In such an instance, we realize the cause-and-effect consequences at play — of a thought that leads to a sensation, where mind-to-body interaction is “proven” by the symbiotic relationships and coherence of and between the two.

David Hume, ever the doubter and cynic, would likely have argued (beyond a mere declaration of dismissiveness in saying, “Bosh!” with a distinctive Scottish accent) that no necessary connection between the thought and the sensation has occurred, any more than the sequence of one following upon another.  Yet, we all believe that there is some sort of a connection, whether directly causal or otherwise.

Thus do we accept the descriptive custom when a mystery write speaks about the “cold chill” that ran up the victim’s spine just before the killer put his hands around the woman’s throat — a clear indication that observation following upon a thought resulted in a tactile sensation.  But the subtle distinction made here — not of a thought that brings about a sensation, but the “warmth of a thought”, is a somewhat slight variation of the causal connection.  Not that the thought itself links to a consequential sensation, or that there is a causal linkage between thought and tactile phenomena, but that the two are one and the same — of the very sensation within, of and encasing and encapsulating the thought itself.

In other words, the thought itself is the warmth, and the warmth is the thought, such that the “of” is not a causal consequence brought about by a sequence of X-following-upon-Y, but the space between concept and sensation doesn’t even exist.  It is somewhat like the difference between the following 2 sentences: “The discontent in winter” and “The winter of discontent”.  Is there a distinction with a difference?

Linguistic subtleties abound only within the ivory towers of academicians; for the rest of us, such separateness of meanings rarely impact with significance or relevance (ah, now that is the rub, isn’t it — to argue over the difference between “significance” and “relevance”?).  The warmth of a thought — can the tactile sensation be separated from the conceptual construct?

It is like the medical condition that a Federal or Postal employee suffers from — the one (or many such ones) that begin to prevent the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job.  Can the medical condition itself ever be separated from the life that one lives?

Others talk about “it” as if the “it” (the medical condition) is some other entity or stranger, but for the suffering Federal or Postal employee, the “it” is part and parcel of the life itself.  That is why, for a Federal employee under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, it is important to be clear, elucidating and coherent in writing up one’s Statement of Disability on SF 3112A when making one’s “case” for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to approve a Federal Disability Retirement Application — for, when the Federal or Postal employee is suffering from a medical condition and is in need of filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, the warmth of a thought is the same as the suffering felt and the anxiety one is left with for a future yet uncertain.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Postal & Federal Disability Retirement: Morning quietude

It is that early morning time when dogs remain still, mice scurry about and the soft snore of distant somber drifts down hallways without traffic of daily discourse.  Morning quietude is a slice of a coming day before the tumult of life begins.

Modernity possesses a level of activity heretofore untried and unimaginable; the constant barrage of emails, the connectedness that everyone feels pressured to comply with; the fact that we are glued to technology, dependent upon it, anticipating it for satisfying our every needs; and beyond the storms of everyday living, there is still a need for that brief period of morning quietude.  It is, in many ways, an extrapolated slice of a metaphorical interlude; for, like the stages of a linear life itself, there are periods of extremes that can be charted on any graph that reflects the daily heights and depths of human activity.

The other side of the spectrum, of course, is the nighttime rest – whether of the need for a period of “down-time” before turning in for the night; or even of sleep itself: how difficult, whether immediate or preceded by a period of insomnia; or even of tossing and turning throughout each night, every night.  Then, morning quietude dawns.  Does it last for very long, or will the rush of the day’s noisiness shatter any semblance of peaceful calm?

Medical conditions are likened to those mornings shaken and interrupted.  For, with unexpected rudeness, they awaken us from that slumber we feel where we were once immortal, invincible and unchallenged.  Then, one day we wake up and realize that we are all too human, and our bodies deteriorate, our minds begin to slip.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition necessitates one to begin considering filing 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, it is like that interruption of morning quietude that finally makes us realize that one has no choice in the matter.

Just as the peace and calm of early morning cannot last forever, so the Federal or Postal employee who cannot perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job cannot sit idly by and watch as events continue to deteriorate at one’s job, in one’s personal life, and the clash between health and work.  Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits is the next logical step after the morning quietude is broken – when the mice no longer make noises and the dogs begin to bark.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement from Federal Government Employment: Pause

It is an act which involves non-action, and results from the character trait of caution.  As an identified activity of inert behavior, it is telling that the concept is recognized as a contrast to its linguistic cousin, like the coupling of “being and nothingness”, or of “love and hate”, as if the mercurial combination is a natural outflowing of innate necessity.  Not quite the punctuation of finality in a period, nor the elongated independence of a semicolon; yet, the pause is marked by a comma, that grammatical eavesdropping left like a careless crumb on the way to a destination not quite directed, yet motivated by hesitant steps of trepidation.

It tells much of the person who utilizes a comma — that pause which breaks up the unfettered line between the starting point and the destination; and like bird droppings on an empty sidewalk where fashion and cleanliness are about to bustle with fervor, the avoidance like a recognized plague or viral epidemic makes everyone take a wide turn as a detour from the straight line of confidence and brash repose.  It is why the warrior places a unique marking just where the eye of the enemy may become distracted, to give that moment of hesitation before the sword switches directions in a clash of metal upon metal; for, it takes but a pause to give an advantage between two samurai from the same school of meditative assassins. For the animal in search of its carnivorous appetite, the momentary hesitation before the scent of man allows for evolutionary guidance in the face of danger.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must consider ending his or her Federal or Postal career because of a medical condition, reflection which precedes and follows is often a positive aspect of that natural extension of movement forward; so long, however, as it is recognized that the non-activity will not accomplish or produce anything, in the end.

Preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, may in the end be an inevitability where the declarative punctuation of an exclamation point will be needed; but in the meantime, one may want to wait while the apostrophe which makes for the possessive nature of one’s job and career may ultimately float down as a comma on the sidewalk of life, thereby creating in the pause a reality where sidestepping an unavoidable outcome will no longer do any good.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Disability from Federal Government Employment: That departed innocence of yonder years

Whether we have become meaner as a whole, or that people have always been so and we just never knew it, we shall never know.  How does one contrast the incomparable?  What algorithm would be applied, which quantitative analysis, and how would a qualitative methodology of content-purity be administered?  Parity of differentiation would destroy any meaningful application; for, the generational divide would question the relevance of any prior criteria applied, and the subjectivity of inherent bias as to the meaning of innately elastic words would undermine the entire format.

Is there a natural yearning for a bygone age — of romanticizing a time never quite existing, somewhat skewed, and forever filtered through the antiseptic memory edited by time, desire and the psychology of protective devotion?  Do we selectively choose, whether unconsciously or with deliberative acuity, that which we want to preserve, like those museums housing reconstructed prehistoric beasts from mere fragments developed into an imaginative construct of creative fantasies?  Yet, there are clearly narratives which have annotated a different mentality, a structure of a departed innocence portraying a pastoral purity forever vanquished by modernity of vacuity.

Mark Twain’s works surely provide evidence of it; although, one has to read his works of later years to recognize that even he succumbed to the cynicism of life’s undesired experiences.  Look at the ending in Pudd’nhead Wilson; do any of the characters emerge victorious from the circumstances ascribed, or does the wheel of misfortune simply accept the inevitability of a world ensconced in the satire of fate as administered by gods who play with eternity and circumstances, like malevolent children with insects and matches?

Then, of course, there is Carl Sandburg’s depiction in, The Prairie Years —  but does that not prove the point?  Was it not merely a retrospective outlook of a selectively chosen era, characterized by age and want of holding on to yonder years forever lost and transcribed merely by an age of innocence never in existence but by device of mythologization (despite the ugliness of such a term)?  Yet, whether of reality or of tricking one’s self by some repressed psychological device, the human need to retain and preserve that departed innocence of yonder years, is a reality which is part and parcel of the complexity inherent in the phenomenology of sanity.

This is important to consider, especially for the Federal employee and U.S. Postal worker who feels a sense of hopelessness and despondency, given the current situation of contending with a medical condition and where decisions concerning one’s future must be made.  For, when a medical condition begins to intervene, and the Federal or Postal employee must consider the probability of filing 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, the “surface” issues that must be contended with — of the unpleasantness of the circumstances themselves; the hostility of the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service; the medical inability and incapacity resulting from the illness or injury; all of these are mere “appearances” which conceal a more substantive undercurrent of “reality” imposed.

For, like the yearning for that departed innocence of yonder years, the truth of the matter is that all human beings seek for, and desire, a sign of kindness — that simple act that costs nothing, but encompasses an untold value of meaningful touch which feels for a brief moment the brush of an angel’s garment as it shuffles silently by, leaving the warmth and floral scent of a life worth living.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: The traveling troubadour and trobairitz

There are vocations and careers which once were, and now forgotten.  Life cycles in endless streams of dying embers and regeneration of growth; and like the mythical Phoenix which arises from the ashes of destruction, so we tend to romanticize that which once was, is now forever lost in the forgotten residues of concealed fingerprints in timeless memories once secluded but dissipated as storytellers no longer found an audience for tales left untold, and children turned to self-amusement with videos, technological blank stares, and smartphones which glow well into the night.

Troubadours of the middle ages (and for those wondering, since this is now a gender-neutral universe and we dare not fail to include the binary aspect of such identification, the female counterpart known as the “trobairitz”), traveling under the patronage of princes in fiefdoms who showed the first signs of supporting “the arts”, and thus would allow for actors, performers and lyric poets to entertain and provide a respite of asides from a world which knew poverty beyond modernity’s capacity to comprehend, plagues which spread quickly and with devastating tenacity, and amongst rogues who cared not for the intellectual conscience recorded by scribes and religious orthodoxy of the Aquinas tradition.

They came onto the scene of history, and disappeared by the end of the High Middle Ages.  Do we even think about them, today — their careers, their imprint upon a fellow human being’s life, and even of the shadow which appeared but for a whispering moment, and with the light of day left not even a hint of prior existence?  Is that what Heidegger meant, when he described human existence as an avoidance out of fear of the ultimate fate of each man?  And so we look upon our own careers, and the choices we have made in life, and that to which we look into the crystal ball for the future.

Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are contemplating filing 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, must by necessity feel trepidation for the unknown.  That is natural.  But as necessity is the mother of invention, so the end of a Federal or Postal career should never bring pause to a hopeful perspective for a future yet undetermined, whether unknown or barely discernible.  And like the traveling troubadour and trobairitz of a past age, the career itself is but a whisper in time, and it is the substance of the life lived, and not the sacraments of a vocation we had chosen, which make for value in a life of plenty.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire