FERS Medical Disability Benefits: Connections

Much of them are derived by tradition.  Time was, there was never a question about it because the foundational unit of a family constituted the basis of our connections.  Transience; the ability to move to places afar; the invention of the automobile; these, and much more, brought the question of connections to the fore, to the extent that technology companies convinced everyone that “connectivity” was something needed, desired and missing.

Of course, one might argue that this country never developed any “traditions”, and that we have always been an aggregation of leftovers.  This is a country without connections.  The connections were severed through migration and immigration, and ours is a population of connection-less peoples.  So, what is the solution?  Or, is it even a problem?

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 having that close connection, anymore, to the workplace, to coworkers, to the Agency or the Postal Service itself resulting from an overwhelming sense of isolation as a consequence of the illness or disability itself — preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application under the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management will fulfill two tasks: One, it will cut off the connection to your former career, and perhaps your “former self”, but in addition (and Two), it will allow for the connection to a greater priority: your health.

Connections are important; but, sometimes, to disconnect in order to make connections to greater and more important issues is a recognition which may result in the greatest of all connections: That of making the proper decision, and thereby attaining the higher connection of wisdom.

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 Benefits: Maintenance and Repair

We know the difference; of performing regular maintenance as opposed to the necessity of repair when something breaks down.

In recent years, there has arisen a cottage industry for every type of mechanical device: Of heating units and cooling systems; of automobiles; of computers; snow blowers, etc.  Maintenance is the yearly or semi-annual need for attending to required cleaning, parts-replacement and other issues — in an effort to prevent a breakdown.

Repair is when the breakdown occurs, and when we can then blame either the failure of maintenance as the failed preventative measure (now, in reflection, thought to have been unnecessary), or the question as to why such maintenance failed to detect or otherwise forecast the failure.

Medicine itself has engaged in that line of thinking: By getting regular checkups, scheduled diagnostic tests, follow dietary guidelines, etc., we believe that such “maintenance” actions can prevent the onset of disease and conditions.

An analogy can be made for preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS: Preventative maintenance is hiring a lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law; Repair is if you do a “do-it-yourself” approach for the Initial Stage of the Process, or even the Reconsideration Stage, then you go to a Federal Disability Lawyer to “repair” the denial from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

In the end, while no lawyer can guarantee a successful outcome in a FERS Federal Disability Retirement application, the preventative maintenance of a Federal Disability Retirement application is the preferred course, but if you get denied, you will certainly need to get the legal repair-work done by contacting an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

Medical Retirement Benefits for US Government Employees: The Spiraling Life

There are spiral church towers; spiraling stair cases; spiraling lives — often, and seemingly, out of control.

Anxiety is often described as spiraling upward and out of control; depression, downward, with loss of objectivity.  “Control”, of course, is the preferred and accepted normative structure in daily living, and to be “out-of-control” means that we are unable to keep our fears in check, our anxieties within restrictive limits, and our depressive symptoms within reasonable boundaries.

The way in which we live — of the demands of work, obligations of family, the emotional baggage we carry with us from childhood onwards — contributes greatly to the manner of our lives.  The spiraling life — whether by choice or by habit — is too often the one we are left with.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition seems to be spiraling out of control, contact an OPM Disability Lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and consider the option of filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) Disability Benefits: Obstacles

There are many in life; whether of financial, physical, intellectual or emotional; whether we are born with certain God-given talents or lack them in excess of explicit ignorance; or whether we are born with that proverbial “silver spoon in our mouths” or not, the burden we carry is like John Bunyan’s heavy knapsack, of the sins we create and carry.

Some obstacles are objectively in existence and have no relationship to the ones we create; others, within ourselves and created by the ghosts of our past deeds.  To what extent are the obstacles which prevent us from advancing merely the emotional difficulties we bring about?

Certainly, this world is an “unfair” one — one in which who one is born to, where one is a citizen of, and to which “class” we belong to plays a large role in who we can become; and in the end, sheer will and determination to succeed may not be enough.  The 5’ 10” young man who is born with spindly legs and lack of coordination will likely never become a professional basketball player no matter how hard he tries; and the individual who lacks a foundation of talent in any given area certainly faces obstacles beyond the reach of dreams or hopes; but is that the definition of “fairness” or “unfairness”?

Early on, it is important to assess one’s circumstances, talents and opportunities, and tailor our goals accordingly.  Should you “shoot for the stars”, nevertheless?  Possibly — but still, with an objective assessment.

How about when you engage in a process like filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits?  Should you make a similar assessment about the obstacles to be faced?  As in life generally, so should the same rules apply before entering the complex arena of Federal Disability Retirement Law.

As trying to obtain a Federal Disability Retirement annuity presents multiple obstacles, so should the Federal or Postal employee contemplating filing for the benefit of Federal Disability Retirement reach out to a FERS Disability Retirement Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and consider the options, the difficulties — the obstacles — before pursuing such a benefit.

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

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: The tenuous seat

It may be that where you are sitting, you have that constant sense of insecurity and angst; that the legs that are currently holding you upon the wooden seat are unstable, questionable, perhaps even possessing a history of prior breakage and collapse.  Is the position you hold flimsy, weak, subject to the winds of change and the moods that prevail?

Life isn’t supposed to be that way; or so we are taught from a young age.  There are “rules of the game”; people “have to” abide by certain unspoken (or openly declared) constrictors of behavioral acceptability; and yet, the rule-breakers seem always to be able to flaunt the exceptions and sidestep, overstep and trample upon the boundaries that everyone else must abide by.

The tenuous seat is the one that the person sensitive of and susceptible to the whims of societal constructs so diligently struggles to abide by; it is the vulnerable who always pays the price, while the brash and uncaring go on and pass by everyone else.  The tenuous seat is the one that the ordinary person sits upon; then, when a medical condition comes along and weakens the structural foundations even further, the very wobbling legs that barely withstood the vicissitudes of time begin to fracture and reveal their internal fissures.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have a sense of sitting in the tenuous seat because the impact of the medical condition is beginning to take its toll, it is time to make plans to secure a more stable future — or, metaphorically, to consider sitting in another chair.

The tenuous seat is the one you have been sitting in for these past several years, and it is time to play the rules of the game of musical chairs, and to find the one that will “fit” the seat of your pants, by 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 or CSRS Offset.

The tenuous seat is the one that needs repair, and the one that needs repair is also the one that needs replacement.  When life’s chair that once provided a sense of stability and rest begins to wobble with the changes of time, it is an indication that the next step in the musical chairs of life’s stormy periods calls upon the Federal or Postal employee to initiate the steps to embrace the change; it is time to consult with an attorney who specializes exclusively in Federal Disability Retirement law.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: The Moral Code lost in pragmatism

Kant is the best example, and is used often.  Of that arrogance defined by universalization of a query; and if we are willing to apply it in all circumstances, regardless of individual differences that may matter in the context of exceptions recognized, we are to adhere to that which may harm our own interests.  Why is transcendence important?  Why do philosophers insist that any “valid” moral basis possess a metaphysical foundation, transpired in order to justify a cornerstone unsullied by the meanness of common life?  Is the fact of relative significance unacceptable merely because it is subject to change?  Do we not, in daily life, have to adapt in every circumstance, all the time throughout every encounter with experiences, and is this not the very essence of survival?

We bought the posit of Plato and Aristotle – those two old Greek men who provided the foundation of Western Thought – that either (A) a transcendent Form of universalized principle must exist, or (B) that a methodological argumentation must be able to be advanced, in order to “justify” the ethical groundwork telegraphed.  That is how laws, statutes, and societal foundations have evolved – from the implicit assumption that, somehow, principles above and beyond the pragmatic are necessary.  But are they?  In a world that embraces pure materialism and the genetic predisposition of all that exists, without the inconvenience of a creator or grand inquisitor, is not the approach of pragmatism – of that which merely “works” – enough?

That is how the Federal agencies and the U.S. Postal Service operates these days; they care less about any “principles” of fairness in the workplace, or employment “codes” that allegedly overshadow the work ethic applied to employees, and instead, approach it with a view towards the bottom line:  Profitability.  For so many years, the Federal Government was incessantly being compared to the private sector – in terms of output, efficiency and investment-for-returns.  Such comparisons failed to recognize the obvious:  the two general entities served different purposes and needs of society, and forcing them to coalesce and reflect each other merely denigrated the essence of each.

It is not so much the attributable similarities between Plato and Aristotle which form the foundation of such thinking; rather, it is the contrasting approaches between Heraclitus and Parmenides that conform our moments of contemplative underpinnings:  between change and permanence, betwixt relativity and transcendence.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are 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, the question often arises as to a conflicting sense between one’s “Moral Code” and the pragmatic need to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through OPM.  Often, such a conflict is merely a result of muddled thinking – that, somehow, it is not “right” or “fair” to file for benefits when one is so young, or where one can still be productive, but not at the same level as before.  But that is precisely how the benefit of Federal Disability Retirement is set up – to allow for a retirement from one’s particular kind or type of work, yet presenting an opportunity to remain productive in the private sector, and potentially make up to 80% of what one’s former Federal or Postal position currently pays.

Morality is all well and good for the elitists of our culture, but in the common world of pragmatism, we must embrace that which we are given, like breadcrumbs dusted off at the dinner table of the behemoth called, the United States Office of Personnel Management.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: Life as a frown

Is most of life a frown, with a few smiles which make it all worthwhile?  Or is it perceived as its opposite – of predominantly smiles, with some frowns interspersed throughout?  Is that like the test-question for psychological health, of whether the glass is seen as half empty, or half filled?  Does the answer to the question depend upon the mood of the moment, the ethereal pattern of the day, or the fabric of that which is woven into our DNA by a matrix of unassailable conventions?  There is, to be sure, a weight of paradigms and an interwoven context which cumulatively aggregates into a “personality” of who one is; but can a Rorschach test unravel the depths of a psyche, or does it determine the course of one’s future actions because of the embedded nature of an anguished soul?

One wonders, ultimately, whether language is the conduit of the perception we possess, and that is why the Hindu guru or the Zen monk admonishes to seek silence, and to quell the obstacle of words and voices.  For, does an animal engage in unspeakable atrocities?  Of self-harm or self-immolation, or worse, of mass executions?  Is it not because of the conveyance of language, in communicating thoughts created and linguistic strings of previously-unimagined evils, that we reach the pinnacle of banality (to borrow a phrase from the Philosopher, Hannah Arendt)?  Would a man of such mediocrity as Eichmann have concocted the horrors of mass extermination, but for felicities directed by a conspiracy of greater evils?

Life as a frown; it is to approach the world with a certain perspective.  Life as a smile; it is to reproach the universe for being too downtrodden.  Is there a difference, or merely a play upon words where the distinction is lost once we wipe away the blur from our morning eyes and begin to engage in the work of the day?

Leisure is needed for the miscreant to employ the folly of a wasted day.  Time was that we all had to survive by physical toil, and worry involved how to eat in order to survive.  That is what consumes all of the rest of the Animal Kingdom; to survive, one must eat; to eat, one must toil; and the rest and residue leaves one too exhausted to consider, but for the technology of leisure where thoughts may invade and pervade, in order to create malevolent constructs of linguistic artifices.

For the Federal or Postal employee who suffers from a medical condition, such that the 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 positional duties, the “approach of life” is an easy matter to conceive of:  the medical condition itself has made the determination for you.  Life becomes a frown, with nary a smile to intercede, when the work of each day is beset with anguish, pain and sorrow.

Preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, actually has a constructive goal and purpose:  To alter the course of a future yet undetermined, and make life as a basket of smiles, to the extent possible in this universe of frowns.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Postal & Federal Disability Retirement: Ritualistic Behavior

We persuade ourselves that only children play those games; of turning suddenly left, instead of right; of pretending to be asleep, only to unexpectedly open one’s eyes to test the reality of our surroundings; and other discordant acts in an effort to defy the predetermination of fate, as if the karmic principles governing the universe are subject to the vicissitudes of private thoughts.  But the anomaly of the unexpected is that, once a pattern of disjointed behavior itself becomes a monotony of the routine, the corridors of ritualistic behavior become entrenched and often prevents one from taking steps necessary to step outside of the proverbial box.

Conventional thought processes can themselves become ritualistic; thus do we believe that by neglect or avoidance, medical conditions will just “go away”; or that the increasing hostility and initiation of adverse actions by an agency will cease if we just “ignore” them; or if we just continue maintaining a semblance of competency, the incompetents will recognize and acknowledge the superiority of motives, and desist from the constancy of interruptive actions.  Such ritualistic behavior, however, has little to no impact upon the reality of the world, no more than when the child in us attempted to defy fate and the karmic gods which rule the universe.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, the route of exit from the madness of the universe is 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.  The plain fact is, no one cares for one’s health or well-being except the person who suffers from the medical condition, as well (one would hope) one’s family and spouse.

Reflection upon the priorities of life must always be reengaged; and continuing onward with vestiges of child-like ritualistic behavior, against all sanity telling us that things will not change despite our best efforts, will only prolong the agony and the angst of life’s unfairness.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through OPM is available for those Federal or Postal employees who can no longer perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties, and while continuation with one’s agency or the U.S. Postal Service may be a laudatory goal revealing an undying sense of loyalty, it is the dying portion of our better selves which whispers the lie that ritualistic behavior can alter the course of human history within the microcosmic universe of karmic incantations.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Requisite Sense of Control

Most of us require a semblance of self-determination, if only to conceal the inadequacies and keep at bay the disasters which portend, or pretend, whichever the case may be.  By controlling circumstances, we believe that we can maintain prevention of crisis, pre-determine the outcome of expectations, and squirrel away the hesitations and insecurities controlling us in our lives of desperate needs.  But life has a way of defying the macro-minutiae of the limited universe within our reach and immediate control.

Mastery of life is difficult to attain; just when we thought we had grasped the foundational principles of life and living, old age sets in, and the youthful vigor dissipates, like the ethereal dust of residue left behind by the flight of angels.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers, it is that sudden onset of a medical condition which nags and refuses to go away, which becomes the harbinger of things to come.  Agencies and the Postal Service tend to be “meddlers”, and once a particular Federal or Postal employee becomes the trigger-sighted individual, the stray bullet that travels is normally not too far behind.  Loss of control, or the abandonment of a requisite sense of control, is derived when agencies target, and when adverse actions are issued, a PIP is imposed, and leave restrictions commanded.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement is an option which is a viable avenue to pursue, precisely because it attains and reasserts that requisite sense of control, by securing a needed annuity for some semblance of financial security and stability.  OPM Disability Retirement is also a means of re-focusing one’s life upon the priorities which matter — such as one’s health and well-being, so that the harassment and hostility at work will cease.

But the long road in preparing, formulating, filing and waiting upon a Federal Disability Retirement application, filed ultimately through, and decided by, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is another bureaucratic morass which — for a time, at least — will feel like entering another and surreal universe where one’s destiny is in the hands of another: OPM.  But in life, as in the parallel universe of the absurd, one must first lose control in order to gain the requisite sense of control.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill
OPM Disability Attorney