FERS Disability Law: From Sanity to Madness

How quickly does it appear to disintegrate; and, yet, upon closer reflection, evaluation and inspection — of the signs missed; the indicia ignored; the greater positivity of perspective misplaced.

On the microcosmic scale, the seemingly “happy” family — of the regular routine of school, work, activities and the busy schedule confined to the kitchen table’s calendar marked with fulfilling lives; and then, the “sudden” disintegration by infidelity, followed by accusations, signs missed, evidence ignored, of claims to underlying unhappiness and a world gone awry.

On a macro-scale — of dealing with a rogue nation; of lavishing with red carpets, acceptance into the greater “league of nations” and believing that by encouraging comfort and affluence, the core of authoritarianism will diminish.  Then — invasion, mayhem, cruelty and bestiality of warring stratagems; and we “suddenly” awaken to a universe where yesterday appeared sane and today became madness.

From sanity to madness can occur in an instant — from individual lives to geopolitical spheres.  But of the signs we missed, the indicators ignored.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition where the the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the basic elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the sanity of daily living can quickly become interrupted by the emergence of an injury or medical condition impacting one’s career, daily living, and general livelihood.

Sure, there were probably some indicators early on about the severity and chronic nature of the developing medical condition, but more importantly, it is of relevance to evaluate and assess in the immediacy of its impact upon your ability and capacity to perform the essential elements of your job.

Contact a Federal Disability Retirement Attorney to discuss the viability of preparing, formulating and filing an application for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS), through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, before the quick-step marching band which plays to the silence of the crowd doesn’t turn the relative calm of sanity into a mad-dash of madness.

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 Attorney Help: The Hammer or Screwdriver

They are two different tools or implements; of the latter, a connotation not of the tool itself, but the approach to take.  In grammar (do we even teach that in schools, anymore?), the term “implement” can be either a noun or a verb.  As a noun, it is a tool, utensil or other piece of equipment.  As a verb, it means to act upon a decision made or plan devised.  In either meaning, it is the application of X upon Y, as a tool to use or a decision to move forward upon.

As to the specific tools — the hammer or the screwdriver — the application of either depends upon the work to be done.  As metaphors, they denote differing approaches.  The way of the hammer is to pound whatever it is which needs to be driven in; the approach of the screwdriver is to slowly and methodically twist and turn the screw until it attaches and secures the two or more surfaces which previously remained separate and apart.  The manner and approach between the two differ considerably, but both in their completion manage to do the job required.

In Law, the two approaches require thought and planning.  The “hammer” approach, of pounding the law aggressively; the “screwdriver” way, of a quieter, more persuasive tone.  The choice between the two depends upon the circumstance, the audience, the goal and the plan.  For Federal Disability Retirement applicants, the manner and approach of applying the law is important.  What you say; how you say it; the hammer approach or the screwdriver manner — that is the province of an experienced lawyer.

Contact a FERS attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and consider whether in preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal or Postal Disability Retirement application under the Federal Employees’ Retirement System (FERS) with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, you should use the hammer approach, or the screwdriver methodology.

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 & Postal OPM Disability Retirement: The Troubled Life

In one sense, all lives are troubled; otherwise, we would not be speaking about life at all, for “life” itself is a series of troubles encountered.  Every now and again, we hear about a life which was “privileged” or “blessed” — of a carefree, essentially trouble-free existence.  But how long can that last?  And was it truly an advantage to have such a childhood?  For, part of “growing up” and preparing for the “real world” is to introduce internal tools to “deal” with problems encountered.  If a child is not properly prepared to handle and engage in the task of problem-solving, then he or she will indeed be at a disadvantage when first entering the world at large.

There are troubled lives, and then there are the rest of us — of lives with troubles.  The troubled life is one in which transition from childhood to adulthood never occurred because proper preparation was never allowed for.  The troubled life that the rest of us lead — of a life full of troubles, often like an endless series of problems to be solved — is simply the norm of regular living.  This life is a troubled one precisely because life itself presents an endless series of challenges to be solved; and it is the “how” of that encounter that makes all of the difference. It is never a static continuum, however, and there are times in life when there are more troubles than in other times.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must confront the troubles of a medical condition and all that it entails in trying to perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the time to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits may have arrived.  Proper preparation; an effective application; the “tools” needed to maneuver through the complex administrative process; these are all “troubles” which need to be confronted and “problems” to be solved.

The “troubled” life for a Federal or Postal employee contending with a medical condition remains so unless the tools of resolution are applied, and in order to utilize the proper tools to resolve the troubled life, it is best to consult with an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Elevation of the Ordinary

The ordinary is in contrast to the extraordinary; the extraordinary, to the penultimate superlative; and perhaps one may go on to greater heights of adjectives, but the one which cannot be surpassed is that of “perfection”.

Various perspectives depend upon the manner of how we approach life; on the one hand, the “ordinary” can be viewed as comfortable anonymity — of a self-satisfied status of neither shining beyond nor underwhelming those around, but a quiet competence which betrays a quietude of monotony, of sorts.

By distinctive differentiation, the “extraordinary” is separated from the former by way of elevated characteristics that point out some level of accolades beyond — somewhat like those brighter stars within the vast universe of a sky filled with billions and billions of twinkling lights (can you hear in the background the voice of Carl Sagan?).

For some reason, we scoff at the ordinary and encourage a stature of the extraordinary.  Perfection is out of our reach; the extraordinary, however, is somehow seen as achievable, and so we become life coaches for our children within the microcosmic universe of our own lives: You can become X; You can do better; You can be the best; You are a special individual — etc.

When does the ordinary become a goal in life?  When everything and everyone is “extraordinary”, doesn’t the extraordinary become the ordinary?  When the elevation of the ordinary becomes a commonplace occurrence, then nothingness becomes something and everything becomes conflated and indistinguishable.  Until — that which was once ordinary is lessened.

When a medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from doing the ordinary — of one’s job; of enjoying the weekends; of being able to just take out the garbage without pain, etc.; then the elevation of the ordinary becomes a focus of want.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the ordinary is elevated to a goal of satisfaction, then it is time to prepare, formulate and file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Focusing upon one’s health is an ordinary matter for most people — we take our health for granted.  When our health fails, however, then it is time to view the elevation of the ordinary as a means of reaching for a time that once was, where Federal Disability Retirement benefits will allow for the extraordinary circumstances to return the Federal or Postal employee to the desired goal of elevation back to the ordinary.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement for Federal Workers: The house next door

It is the one that follows the same comfortable convention for all these many years — of never knowing the intimate details; a wave of the hand every now and again; of fleeting appearances on various days, such as recycling, garbage and the occasional Saturday when the in-laws from out-of-state come to visit on Thanksgiving, or a birthday, or perhaps when a tragedy occurs and the sudden appearance in the driveway that is filled with cars never before seen.

The house next door, or across the street —the neighbor who you do not know, and somehow never got around to knowing, whether because they were latecomers or you were, and the “other” didn’t seem all that willing, friendly or “neighborly” to begin with, and so a settled truce became the daily routine that never altered, never became a problem, and forever became entrenched in the mundaneness of deliberate social avoidance.

We imagine what occurs in the house next door; or, perhaps not at all, except to complain when they’ve made too much noise, let their grass grow beyond the acceptable conventions of normative beliefs (or otherwise in violation of strict codes imposed by the “lawn police” of the local Home-Owner’s Association), or parked one of their cars in front of your house (yes, it is true — that street section in front of your house is actually not your property, and though it may be obnoxious, the house next door has every right to park the car on your side of the street, right in front of your house).

We never know what occurs to the house next door until one day we read about the tragedy in the pages of the obituary in the local paper.  There is a sadness in that very fact; or, perhaps that is the way we have set up this disinterested and alienated society?  Do we prefer to remain ignorant of the goings-on of the house next door?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition forces the preparation and filing of a 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, it often feels like living in the house next door — for, suddenly, you find yourself looking at familiar surroundings from across the street, or from beyond the fence that separates, and you begin to wonder whether you ever knew your neighbor, and what they are up to.

There is an alienation involved, and you must always remain suspicious as a “new” car is suddenly seen parked across the street, and the Supervisor or coworker seemed to be sharing information and gossiping with furtive eyes averted from your view; and yes, the Federal Agency or the Postal Service may be getting ready to initiate an adverse action of some sort — like the house next door that you never knew and now would rather not.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Early Retirement for Disabled Federal Workers: The chaos of life

The Biblical reality depicted in the very first verses reflects a reality more real than most would suppose, and for those who dismiss the ancient Books as merely relics of a superstitious past and thus irrelevant for modernity’s wake of technological sophistication, perhaps a redux and revisitation is in order.

Most of life is chaos; or, to put it more starkly, the chaotic lives we lead are the rule, and not the exception.  How else to account for the constant need for quietude, of a short respite by leaning back into one’s chair and inviting the soft darkness of a needed nap; a renouncing and resignation away from the constant din of noisiness; of the rush to find time, just a sliver of sanity, within the vast chaos of a feckless universe.

The soft-lined trees that lead us back into our neighborhoods; of the structured redundancy where sidewalks circle into ever-repetitions leading to nowhere; of bedrooms lined like secluded rooms within insane asylums just to get a moment’s peace from the busy-ness of life; and then the alarm clock awakens, the rush is on, into traffic mazes that pound the heart, create migraines from a calm just experienced a mere hour before, and the addiction to craziness begins anew as the dawn of hope becomes mired in the hopelessness of today’s grinding schedule.

The earth is no longer without form, or void, and yet the chaos of formlessness and void-ness remains and surrounds; and the light that we declare is the recreation we so desperately seek, only to be interrupted by the survival instincts that remind us that what we live for cannot possibly be attained, but somehow the darkness from which we escaped so long ago is a vestige of hopes yet rekindling, and if we can only make it through this day, perhaps tomorrow will bring to us a sacrifice of our better selves.

The chaos of life is real; it is with us each and every day.

And 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 reality of such chaos begins to dawn upon the need to prepare, formulate and file 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, lest the chaos of life become life’s chaotic life everlasting, never to be rescued from the formless void of ancients long since remaining.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Legal Representation OPM Disability Retirement: A good turn

At what point does a “good” turn transform into a negative?  Can one help so much so that dependency becomes the habit and negates the “goodness” that was once always a part of the deed?  Isn’t “going to work” a “good” thing?  When does it turn bad?  Is there ever a point where the quality of X becomes diluted so much so by the quantitative increase of the primary identifying ingredient of X to where the essence of X becomes negative-X because of too much X within X?  Can there be, in the simplest of terms, too much goodness where goodness itself turns bad because of the overwhelming goodness involved?  Why is it that the following syllogism doesn’t quite work, and where is the fallacy involved?

Water is a necessary component for life
Life requires water in abundance in order to survive
Therefore, the more water, the greater abundance of life

But we all know that consuming too much water can kill a person.  And, isn’t that the complaint that we have in almost all aspects of living — that we come back to Aristotle’s essential wisdom that there is a “mean” or a “middle ground” of moderation where the extremes on either sides — neither too much nor too little — is the balance in the life that one should always strive for.

That is the basic component of happiness reduced to its pure essentials: of the porridge that is neither too hot nor too cold, but “just right”; of leisure time that relaxes but doesn’t rob from sustained periods of productivity; of a nap that satisfies but doesn’t make one groggy; and of entertainment that borders just to the edge of credibility but stays within the boundaries of allowing one to suspend disbelief, such that one can enjoy it without sighing, turning to a loved one and declaring, “That just isn’t believable.”

But where technology comes into our lives, perhaps we have come to a saturation point where we no longer believe that the “next new innovation” is going to save us any more time or enhance the quality of our lives anymore than the last version of our Smart Phone give us the promise of nirvana that we all stand in long lines to attain.  And so the question again turns full circle: When does a “good” turn into a negative?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers whose medical conditions have come to a point where it prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal position, the vicious circularity of the circumstances makes it into a paradigm where a good turns into a negative: Coming to work exacerbates the medical condition; the stress of being unable to perform the full essential elements of the Federal or Postal job further increases the stress; the Agency or the Postal facility begins to turn upon the Federal or Postal employee; and the job itself — once one of the many “good” things in life — now becomes a detriment and a negative.

It is then time to consider preparing, formulating and filing a Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and thus turning that which was once a “good” but had transformed into a negative, back into a good turn.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Death of the metaphor

Metaphors and analogies are how we communicate; without them, it is the mere drone of sounds emitted, and even if without the directness of a simile where we place the comparison of two or more differing entities and connect with the word “like”, it is the only means of striving to reach a greater understanding of the world around.

The death of the metaphor is a certainty.  Modern technology has eviscerated the capacity of human beings to remain curious; and curiosity is not what killed the cat, but allowed it to remain a force in evolutionary stages of increasing survival instincts, as the trait of the inquisitive allows for greater mastery of the universe.  Smart phones allow for a person to defer memorization; computers deaden the natural instinct for query; and technology in general denies the relevance of a metaphor precisely because we need not struggle to explain – the machines do all of the explaining for us.

The death of the metaphor means the rise of the deadened soul, and suppression of everything that was uniquely human.  Would Shakespeare have survived in this day and age, or the complexity of language allowed for such subtleties of linguistic shades of meaning?

For the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker who is suffering 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 the Federal or Postal employee’s job duties, the need to employ metaphors still exists, as the U.S. Office of Personnel Management – the Federal agency that makes a determination on all Federal Disability Retirement applications – must still be persuaded by argumentation and logical sequencing of thought processes.

Yes, the death of the metaphor is imminent and inevitable, but in the greater corners of administrative law, the metaphor, the simile, the analogy that persuades must yet be utilized in order to make effective a Federal Disability Retirement application, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement from Civil Service: The topic of conversation

How does it come about – that “topic of conversation”?  Is it merely and completely randomly selected, and in a spurious manner caught like the quiet embers that ignite an out-of-control wildfire?  Or, does someone Google on the Internet, something like, “Good dinner conversation topics”, and then proceed to print them out so that silence does not pause the ebb and flow of a party’s chatter?

If you listen carefully at conversations (which, by the way, are becoming a rarity these days, as one becomes ensconced in one’s own insular world of smart phones and Facebook postings, Instagram obsessions and Twitter feeds of inane utterances), you realize the randomness of subjects embraced, and how they often travel like a drunken driver meandering without lights or signals to brace the passersby.  Is that how Darwinian evolution looks like as an analogy of sorts?  A senseless, meandering coveting of erupting utterances without guide, meaning, direction or purpose?

But what if you become the topic of conversation – does it suddenly change, where the ear is suddenly turned red, the interest enlivened, and the aura of disinterestedness suddenly lifts?  And what if you are not in the room, but left to freshen up or take a break, and upon your reentrance, the silence suddenly pauses and the topic of conversation reveals a fissure and a gravitational shift that suddenly embarrasses and shames?  The ears burn – is that merely an old wives’ tale, or does that really happen?

Isn’t that what occurs with Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are considering filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management?

As an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, the undersigned is often asked as to when the agency or the Postal Facility should be informed, prior to submission of an OPM Disability Retirement application, of one’s intent to file. It is a rather complicated question, and can have consequences unforeseen and not always positively received, and thus should be specifically tailored to each individual circumstance.

But do not be fooled:  The Federal or Postal employee who files a Federal Disability Retirement application through OPM, at some point during the process will inevitably become the topic of conversation; whether that should bother you, or you should care, depends upon many factors, and not the least of which is often influenced by sound representation by a Federal Disability Retirement lawyer who has guided the Federal Disability Retirement process throughout the gambit of the administrative process.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Federal Disability Retirement: The Usual Dialogue

Much of our daily dialogue is determined by rote repetition.  Discourse throughout a typical day need not be given much thought; breakfast routine; interaction with colleagues and coworkers; declarative statements which have been repeated hundreds of times, both by one’s own voice as well as by others; salutations which require merely an audible sound; and the sun sets upon another closure of human inertia.

Then, some dialogues awaken the soul.  A sudden discovery of infidelity (though, given the pervasive appearance of popular culture, that, too, is quite commonplace); a perpetrated criminal act; a discussion with one’s doctor concerning a medical condition.  Even the latter, of course, from the doctor’s viewpoint, can be quite commonplace.  But for the Federal employee and the U.S. Postal worker who has been pursuing one’s Federal or Postal career for years, decades, etc., the self-realization that a medical condition may end the financial security represented by one’s job, is a traumatic event in and of itself.

All options for the future must be considered; and the daily dialogue of rote routine must be cast aside.  This is not a time for niceties; it is an event for thoughtful action.  Preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether one is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is an affirmative step which one must pursue aggressively.

The inertia of past repetition of life’s puzzlements; the frightening prospect of an uncertain future; these must all be cast aside, and the reality of facing a time of forced creativity must be fully engaged.  And then, of course, there is the added anxiety that the administrative specialists at OPM will view your own application for Federal Disability Retirement benefits as just another ho-hum event, one which is merely part of their usual dialogue.

It is up to the Applicant him/herself, in preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, to ensure that the Federal Disability Retirement application is cogent, clear, concise and convincing — in other words, not part of that daily dialogue of thoughtless repetition.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire