Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Work Left Undone

That is why gardening and other similar endeavors help to calm the human mind; for, like the Zen of human existence, projects which have a starting point and end with results that can be observed with gratifying exclamations — like a rock garden finished and allowed to visibly appreciate — is a point in life which has been “done”.

Most of life’s work is that which is left undone — the son or daughter who left home too early; projects of which you participate in only a portion of; things you wanted to say but never had a chance to; dreams dreamed of but left as mere vestiges of feeble attempts left unfinished; and so we carry on with out lives, always with a detritus of abandoned work left undone.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have come to a point in their medical conditions where there now exists an incompatibility between work and health, it may indeed be difficult to leave the work behind — work left undone.  But there is still the future to consider: of work which still can be done; of prioritizing the primary work left undone — your health.

Contact a FERS Disability Attorney who specializes in OPM Disability Retirement Law, and consider that the Federal work left undone can always be picked up by someone else, whereas your health cannot.

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.

 

Federal Employee Medical Disability Retirement Help: Resisting

Whether against a temptation or an innate sense that something is not quite right, the temporary delay of gratification — for, that is ultimately the result of resisting — can be of great benefit.

The impulse is often very strong; to resist takes a deliberate and conscious decision, empowering one’s will to deny that which urges one on.  By practice and, over time, embracing a habit which becomes a part of one’s character, resisting becomes easier; the will is replenished with daily fortitude; the nature of one’s character becomes emboldened and whole.

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, resisting is an important part of the process: Resisting just quitting and walking away; resisting just giving up; but not all resisting is positive — as in, resisting contacting a Federal Disability Lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law in order to consider the next steps to take to successfully formulate a strategy to obtain one’s Federal Disability Retirement benefits.

For that, you should give in to the urge: Contact FERS Disability Retirement Attorney who specializes in OPM Disability Retirement Law.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

Federal Disability Retirement: Thought versus thoughtless

Does the former have an advantage over the latter?  Our tendency is to think so — as in, “Being a thoughtful person is better than being a thoughtless person.  And, in any event, it is always better to think about things than not to.”

Really?  Does reality bear such a thought out, and does thinking about something as opposed to its opposite — not thinking about it — gain any advantage?  Does Man’s biological advancement through evolutionary selectivity of genetic dominance necessarily favor those who engage in the activity of “thinking” over those who do not?

Take the following hypothetical: An individual must make a “serious” decision — i.e., perhaps about one’s future, career, marriage, etc.  He is told to “take some time to think about it”, and does so dutifully.  He speaks with others; does some reading; mulls over and “reflects” upon the issue; takes out a yellow-pad and writes the columns, “Pros” and “Cons”, and after days, weeks, perhaps even months, comes to a decision.  Within a couple of years of making the decision, he realizes that he has made a fatal error.

Now, the counterexample: Same scenario, but in response, the individual says, “Naw, I don’t need to think about it.  I just go on what my gut tells me.”  He goes out, parties, avoids “thinking” about it, and the next morning makes that “important” decision.  He remains happy with the decision made for the remainder of his life.  So, the obvious query: What advantage did one have over the other, and what fruitful outcome resulted from “thought” versus “thoughtlessness”?

Yet, we persistently hear the phrase, “I should have thought about it,” or “I should have given it more thought” — always implying that, had further reflection been accorded, had additional wisdom been sought, or multiples of contemplation allowed, ergo a different result would have been achieved.

The error in the logic of such thinking is that one assumes a necessary connection between “result” and the activity of “thinking”, when in fact it is the very activity itself which retains a value in and of itself.  “Thought,” “thinking” and “thoughtfulness” are activities which have a value by themselves.  The satisfaction of a result-oriented, retrospective according of value based upon an outcome achieved is to place the value upon the wrong end.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are “thinking” and engaging in “thoughts” about preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, there comes a time when a “decision” must be made.  “Thoughtfulness” is an activity worth engaging in, regardless of the outcome of the activity itself.

In engaging such an activity, it may be worthwhile to seek the advice of an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law — if only to consider the evolutionary advantages in thinking about thoughtful activities as opposed to the thoughtless decisions made by an unthinking thoughtlessness.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement Representation: Forgotten

Is that the basis of our fears?  Does the concept of immortality haunt us precisely because we fear extinguishment, erasure, censure and being forgotten within a moment’s notice beyond the short mention in a local paper’s obituary?  Is that not, instead, the normal course of events — the way in which this non-teleological universe meant it to be — of returning to dust from whence we came, and become regenerated through the soil that embraces our ashes and decomposed flesh so that the genetic materials become recycled by the very foods we digest?

Mortality is that which men fear; becoming immortal is the goal of many; but being forgotten is the fear realized in the lives of most.  What difference, in the end, does it make?

We project an image through the creative imagination of our own psyche, and create images of a time beyond our own demise — of a weeping widow (or widower); children speaking in hushed tones of a person who was but is no longer around; and in our inkling of what it will be like, we posit our own consciousness by being present in a room that acknowledges our own absence.  Is that what sweet revenge is like — of imagining all sorts of regrets by those who shunned us, humiliated and ignored us when we were in their presence in life?

To be forgotten is to regret our own insignificance, and to constantly be haunted by one’s own irrelevance.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, where the medical condition begins to prevent one’s ability and capacity to perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the issue of being forgotten becomes a reality quite quickly and soon in the process of deteriorating health and use of sick leave or going on FMLA.

For, Federal agencies and the Postal Service are quite adept at forgetting — forgetting the years of loyalty shown by the Federal or Postal employee; forgetting the years of service, unpaid overtime and those “extra” hours put in but left uncompensated but for unrealized hopes of future considerations that never come about; forgetting the contributions of yesterday because today and tomorrow are all that matters to the Federal agency or Postal Service; and it is when the word “forgetting” in the present participle transforms into the past participle of “forgotten” that we finally come to realize that health is of greater importance than loyalty; and that is when the recognition that preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, to be filed through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is the best defense against a bureaucracy that has easily forgotten the essence of human worth and dignity.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Attorney Representation for OPM Disability Claims: Equilibrium of life

What is the importance of maintaining one’s equilibrium of life?  The concept, of course, implies a “balance” of sorts, where there is an analogy of images that includes an orderly sequence, a scale that is suspended in the middle and not tilted to one side or the other, and a sense of calm and peace that pervades.  To be “out of kilter” is to have a loss of equilibrium; and somehow to embrace extremes is to manifest a loss of control.

We all lose our equilibrium of life, whether daily, weekly or in more tandem steps of ordinary outcomes.  Sometimes, it is something that someone said at work or just as you leave your house that “throws you off” and gets you into a “bad mood” and out of sorts; or, other times, it is some reminder that triggers something from one’s past, and places one in a foul mood for days on end.

The cottage industry of self-help motivations is alive and well; of acupuncture, therapy, the gym, corporate motivational speakers, healthy diets, unhealthy diets, quiet meditation, protracted yoga, pills for medications, sounder sleep cycles, changing one’s language to reflect a “journey” of sorts, religious fervor, causes to die for, therapy pets, guard dogs, and just plain dogs that come and give you unconditional love…these, and many more, allow for one’s equilibrium of life.

Whether we pay for it daily, weekly, monthly or yearly; whether the money is well-spent or ill-conceived; the goal is always, however you want to characterize it and in whatever manner the language game is cited, the result that is sought is all the same: equilibrium of life.

Then, hopefully, if even then, on one’s deathbed, one can shrug one’s shoulder as one is hooked up to complex life-support systems, and declare to one’s loved ones: “The key to the universe in order to attain the equilibrium of life is…” and gasp out one’s breath, not having had the life left to complete the sentence, and leaving loved one’s and those trying to listen in on the pearls of wisdom otherwise untold, and leaving everyone else out in the proverbial cold.

Perhaps there is a “key” to life that results in one’s equilibrium of life; or, not.

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, the equilibrium of life is often out of sorts, out of kilter and off-balance, precisely because one cannot focus exclusively upon one’s health and maintenance of life’s blessings.

Filing a Federal Disability Retirement application with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, may not be the “key to the universe”, but it is at least an initial, if small, step towards regaining the equilibrium of life.  And that, however small and miniscule an achievement, is at least a first step towards putting the key to life’s problems on layaway and looking with anticipation towards the proverbial light at the end of a tunnel.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: Carpet Bombing

It is an approach meant to saturate an identified area of enemy territory especially recognized as any and all potentialities related to the central target.  The antonym of such an approach is one of targeted precision, such as drone strikes represented by guided missiles upon a specific individual or area of identified combatants.

In either case, collateral damage can be expected; the difference is that in the former methodology, the invading forces remain unconcerned and unperturbed, as it is fully expected; in the latter, the term “precision” has its narrow focus, but with the real-world recognition that general public consumption likes to think that when a targeted focus is declared dead, the rubble of destruction didn’t extend to the entire block surrounding the individual’s living area, when in fact it did and almost always does.  The concepts thus have differing distinctions; in linguistic and semantical disputes, the issue often has to do with the methodological approach of effectiveness.

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 former approach of “carpet bombing” is often the preferred choice, as opposed to the latter perspective of “precision bombing”.  That is exactly why Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who prepare an OPM Disability Retirement application often attach a massive volume and compendium of medical reports and records, hoping to “hit the target” just by sheer coverage of length and width of evidence.

But the old proverb referring to the depth of a body of water, as opposed to the appearance of naked body surface, remains applicable and instructive.  And while the skin may be the largest organ of the human body, covering some 22 square feet in space, the loss of a great portion of it still allows for survival, whereas the heart of a man must remain generally intact, lest the flow of the essence of life becomes restricted or cease altogether.

Precision in every approach and methodological conveyance is almost always the preferred mode; and while systematic formulations in an OPM Disability Retirement case may involve greater input, expansive time and attention in properly preparing the effective Federal Disability Retirement case, the preparation spent in fine-tuning every Federal Disability Retirement application and its compendium of attachments will result in limited collateral damage, with the consequence of allowing others to survive another day despite living within the vicinity of the targeted point of attack.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: The Palate of Human Living

It is both an identifier of a specific part of the human body, as well as a noun used to describe a sophisticated and discriminating characteristic of the human animal.  Used in the former manner, it merely describes nothing more than the biological component in common with all other animals; as presented in the latter form, it distinguishes from the greater commonplace testament of a refinement not otherwise found.

That, then, is the uniqueness of the human being; the capacity to be part of the world around, yet able to be distinctively different and to progressively advance (as opposed to regressively retreat) on the spectrum and scale of achievement.  But in the objective world of reality and pragmatic concerns, there are “equalizers”.  One such factor which levels us all, is an unexpected medical condition.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have striven to personally and professionally advance on a career path with the Federal Government or the U.S. Postal Service, but who now find that the unpalatable future orientation belies one’s capacity to continue because of a medical condition, serious consideration must be granted to filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

The decision itself is not what impacts the palate; rather, it is the cessation of progression on one’s career scale which makes for the unpalatable idea.  But that is where the pragmatics of life, and the dream-like quality of ambition, willfulness and the human spirit of positive-thinking, all come together in a clash of titanic proportions, and serves to undermine the reality-oriented universe of necessity and practicality.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is not a reflection upon the capacity of the creative drive of the individual; it is merely a necessary step in response to a biological requirement in order to advance to the next stage of one’s life.  And just as the palate is not merely a body part, but a refinement of distinguishing taste, so the Federal or Postal employee who cannot see the distinction between moving forward into the next and future achievement from a biological condition which cannot be avoided, is merely of the lower animals, and not the angel whom the gods entrusted as the caretaker of a universe gone astray.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: Upon the Altar of Work

They are structures where sacrifices or worship occur.  Not being mutually exclusive, the former can represent the act of the latter, and the latter can constitute the fulfillment of the former.  And while we, in modernity, think of ourselves as sophisticated and beyond the vestiges of former practices of superstition and unscientific religiosity, an objective view of our actions betray the ongoing reliance upon past residues of robotic constancies.

Of course we have to make a living; of course we have to support our families.  But at what cost, and to whom do we owe our allegiance?

For Federal Gov. employees and U.S. Postal workers who sacrifice themselves at the altar of work, when medical conditions begin to clearly impact, deteriorate, denigrate and destroy the body, mind and soul of the Federal and Postal worker, then it is time to consider preparing, formulating and 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.

As most Federal employees and Postal workers are under the FERS system, the minimum eligibility requirement is to have at least 18 months of Federal Service.  Once that threshold is met, then the question is one of having the proper support from one’s treating doctor, psychiatrist, Nurse Practitioner, etc.  The true test for a Federal Disability Retirement application will be in establishing the nexus between one’s medical condition and the positional duties of one’s official job, as reflected on SF 50 (Federal employees) or PS Form 50 (Postal employees).

Ultimately, when the altar of work becomes more than a means of support, and harkens back to the days of yore where sacrifice and worship intersected to pay tribute to the gods of the underworld, it is time to consider the alternatives available, and for Federal and Postal employees, that should always include the possibility of filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through OPM.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill
FERS Disability Lawyer

 

Federal Medical Retirement: The X Factor

In algebraic equations, it is that unknown variable which remains elusive and concealed, and which must be figured out in order to arrive at the conclusion.  We love those teachers who inform us that “credit” will be “given” for work shown, and that it is not so important to come up with the answer as opposed to the methodology manifested in reaching it.

And so we devised a complex network of signs and symbols, hoping that they concealed the ignorance of our unlearned lack of wisdom.  But the fact remains that leaving the factor unexplained and unfulfilled is like turning one’s back upon a helpless puppy abandoned in the middle of a busy freeway; somehow, the hollowness of leaving behind haunts one with a sense of incompleteness, like the puzzle with a missing piece.

These vestiges of psychological appendages, like damaging mollusks on the underbelly of a drifting boat, remain long after the effort to solve the equation is abandoned; for, in life, we think that all variables have an answer, if only we had listened carefully in the classes we skipped or during which we daydreamed and slept.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to seriously impact one’s ability and capacity to fulfill the positional requirements (or “essential elements”) described, the thought of abandonment through resignation or termination leaves that same taste of dismay and fear, like the residue of pine-goo on the palm of one’s hand.

The “other” option — which constitutes the solution of the X-factor — 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.   While not widely advertised, OPM Disability Retirement is a benefit which is offered when a Federal or Postal employee is no longer able to, because of a medical condition, perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties within the Federal government or the U.S. Postal Service.

Thus, instead of remaining static in a state of utter frustration, attempting like those childhood years of yore when scratching one’s head, peeking over surreptitiously at the blank paper on the next desk, or looking with wonderment at the ceiling above as if the gods of information will reveal the answer through the illuminating fluorescence of those linear tubes, the Federal or Postal employee has the ultimate solution for the X-factor within grasp:  preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire