FERS Disability Retirement Help: The Unraveling

It is similar, yet quite distinct, from the concept of “unwrapping”, or even of “finding”, “revealing”, of “unearthing”.  For, the other words describe an indication of voluntariness — of a third-party agent (or even of the first-person pronoun) engaging in an act of deliberative steps toward an appearance of something.

But that other term — the word which is today’s focus — has a frightening aspect of loss of control, inability to contain, a lack of freedom or choice, and even implying a frailty of crumbling, catastrophic consequences.  When there is a societal unraveling — or even a personal one — there is an underlying sense that the constraints, borders, fences and outer membranes which once restrained and held together the entity contemplated, are now disintegrating.

The term, “bursting at the seams” or “cracks in the foundation” and similar metaphors, are all appropriate when using the term, “unraveling”.

Sometimes, it seems that society as a whole is unraveling.  But societies don’t unravel unless there is an aggregation of personal unravelings, where the cumulative effects of many such individual unravelings result in the further metaphor of “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” phenomenon, in a negative, reversing manner.

Unraveling, of course, is what sells newspapers and online stories; the trading of bad news is always scintillating for the prurient needs we all ascribe to; and the antidote to such a sense of unraveling is to take a walk through your own neighborhood, where it is likely that things still likely appear “normal” and “together”.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are experiencing a personal sense of unraveling because of a chronic medical condition which impacts one’s ability and capacity to perform the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal Service job, the solution may be to file for FERS Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Preparing an effective Federal OPM Disability Retirement application under the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) is tantamount to taking that “walk” through one’s own neighborhood, to get away from the greater sense of unraveling.  For, whether society as a whole is unraveling, or you next door neighbor’s life appears to be boring and normal, you may want to contact a FERS attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and begin the process of preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal or Postal Disability Retirement Application.

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.

 

OPM Disability Retirement: The Past We Imagine

To live in the past is to stunt growth; to merely exist for the present moment, an afterthought’s condiment to the greater self we can be; and to constantly strive for the future is to lose the meaning of life.  There is always a balance to be reached — not only in the past; not merely in the present; not solely for the future.  The three negations — of not, not and not — is a difficult recipe to bake.

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics attempts to teach of the middle or “mean” path, but these days, modernity is unable to comprehend his teachings because we no longer understand the concept of moral virtues.

In modernity, nothing moral is of any consequence (there we go again with the negation of a concept).  So, let us try and delete and extinguish the negations, and rephrase it in positive terms, if we can.  Often, the past we imagine is not the true characterization — for, that terrible childhood we experienced in contrast to the perfection of our neighbor’s past, is often a false magnification of our biased memories. Many of us had bad childhoods; of terrible, destructive parents; of neglectful siblings; of hard times.

First, rebuild the past memories; compartmentalize the negatives and focus on the happy ones.  Second, don’t compare your present circumstances to the past, but paint a picture of hope for the future.  And third, formulate a positive statement for the future — such as, “There is always a pathway forward, under any circumstances”.  Then, live the life of virtue by sticking to the balance between past, present and future.

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 the Federal or Postal worker’s job duties, the future may need to be “painted” with an effective application for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.  The past we imagined must now be set aside; the present circumstances must merely be endured; the future may involve a different career, but it is nevertheless a pathway forward.

Contact a Federal Attorney who specializes in OPM Disability Retirement Law and set aside the past we imagine, and instead, put a proper perspective on the present, and seek guidance for the future.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill
Lawyer exclusively representing Federal and Postal employees to secure their Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

 

Postal & Federal Disability Retirement: Opening Up

Flowers do it; shy individuals, traumatized children, people who feel ashamed; and societies, especially our own, as ours is a country that can stay bottled up only for so long.  Whether the opening up of our country will, in retrospect, be deemed to have occurred too soon, will be determined by the coming weeks.

The concept itself — of “opening up” — necessarily implies a previous state of have “closed down”.  It is an interesting combination of words, where a positive term (“opening”) is related with a direction (up) that is often associated with a transcendent location (i.e., heaven), whereas the “other” term (closing) implies a negative concept associated with hell, damnation, the source of punishment and grief, etc.  In either event, we shall see how history views the opening back up of our society.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition that has impacted his or her ability and capacity to perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, “opening up” has always been part of the problem, because to do so would mean to admit that one’s career may have to be changed.

Consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement under FERS, and consult with an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law.  Opening up to an attorney will always be a confidential matter, and it may result in positive advice that can be usefully applied.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS Disability Retirement Retirement: Destroying Yourself

Self-immolation is not normal for the common beast; but then, Shakespeare noted that, “What a piece of work is man, How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, In form and moving how express and admirable, In action how like an angel, In apprehension how like a god, The beauty of the world, The paragon of animals.  And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?  Man delights not me; no, nor Woman neither; though by your smiling you seem to say so”.

And so through literature do we have such a high opinion of ourselves, though as Prince Hamlet observed, the actions we take fall far below those ideals to which we aspire.  What is said more often than not contradicts what is done; how we behave, a chasm far and wide from the words we employ.  What are our values?  Retirement is a grand goal, but of what good is it if you are debilitated when you reach that stage?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal Service 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 his or her job, the question which must be asked is: What am I killing myself for?  Is it worth getting to the proverbial ”finish line” only to collapse into a wheelchair?

Consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and consult with a FERS Disability Attorney who Specializes in Federal Employee Disability Retirement Law.  Destroying yourself is not the goal; instead, it is to rise above the quintessence of dust and focus upon the paragon of virtues: One’s health.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Filing for OPM Disability Retirement: Goals of abstract purity

Idealism allows for the plethora of such concepts; cynicism born of age and experience quells the exuberance of such vaunted beginnings.

When we were young — no, not the opening lines of a Christopher Robin poem where the hunt for a clove of honey is the day’s goal, but an observation about life’s folly — we harbored principles and moral codes that required strict purity: Success without compromise; life that is perfectly lived; avoidance of mistakes that our parents made; beautiful kids who will exhibit their inherent creativity at every turn, without a wail or disobedient scream of tantrum; and even if such goals of abstract purity never come to fruition, at least there is Instagram in the modern era where we can pretend to have achieved such paradise of ends considered.

Youth pretends to such abstractions; reality tends to soil such purity; and goals formulated at the beginning of life require constant moderation and adaptation to the experience of reality that is encountered throughout.  Such goals of abstract purity are best left in the Ivory Towers of Academia, or in the forgotten memories of childhood dreams.  For, it is reality and the objective world which must be contended with, and not the conceptual paradigms that make up the dreams and fantasies of our former selves.  In the end, grownups don’t have time to waste upon the goals of abstract purity because life is too challenging and reality too stark.

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 position, the Goals of Abstract Purity should be replaced with the Ends of Realistic Objectivity: Of continuing with the Postal Service or Federal Agency only to the extent that one’s health will allow, and to begin the process of preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management under FERS.

And what of those former Goals of Abstract Purity?  You should place them upon the heap of memories that allowed for youthful folly, and realize that one’s health is the ultimate goal of purity — and it is no longer a mere abstraction, but a reality that must be faced.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Disability Retirement for Federal Employees: On the other hand…

Do other species engage in the same games of options and alternative scenarios?  Does the Lioness, just before the charge and race to overtake its noontime meal, say to herself, “Yes, that one looks good; but on the other hand…”?

Or, does the fact that a subjective state of consciousness fails to include verbal statements or conceptual constructs coherent by human standards constitute an absence of such option-choosing methodology of thought processes?

Or, do we accept its silent substitute, where there is an antelope, a wildebeest and a wild boar , and as the lioness surveys the prey before her, the fact that she looks, views, takes into account the ease of capture as to each – in a silent, non-verbal manner – constitute the identical cognitive approach as that of murmuring to one’s self?  “On the other hand…”

Does everything have to be verbal in order to reach a level of “thought”, or can the silent surveying of a predator reach the same level of intellectual coherence as that of a verbalized statement?

What about pain?  If you go to a doctor’s office and the MRI shows multi-level degenerative disc disease and the nurse says to you, “You must be in considerable pain,” and you respond with, “Yes, but I haven’t ever said anything about it” – does that mean that you never had pain, or merely that you did not verbalize it?  Can existence of X remain in a private, insular and singular world, or must it be communicated in order to have a “reality”-based existence?

How is it different from the child who says, “I just saw a purple monster hiding behind the couch”, and the parent smiles and says, “What an imagination!”  The fact that the child saw it and no one else, but failed to verbalize it at first – does it make a difference?  And when the child declared its existence, do we doubt it any more than the admission of the non-stated pain because we don’t believe in purple monsters?  On the other hand…

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, is it better to constantly be a complainer and whiner and keep telling your supervisor and coworkers that you have a medical condition and the medical condition prevents you from doing essential elements X, Y and Z?

Or, like most Federal and Postal workers, do your remain silent for years and even decades, enduring the pain of physical deterioration or the tumult of psychiatric turmoil, and then get “penalized” for it when you file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, merely because “no one knew about it” until it became so bad that you had to file?  On the other hand…

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Medical Disability Retirement: Divided order

Most people are able to tolerate life’s bombardment of stresses by dividing them up, placing them into some semblance of order in priority of tackling them, and bifurcating the individual slices from the aggregate of the whole.  For, if you focus too much upon the forest, as opposed to the individual trees that provide markers for finding your way out, your will become overwhelmed and lost.

It is thus tantamount to the idea of a chaotic rationality, or a messy desk that is disorganized for anyone else but for the one who sits and works at the desk; no one can find anything when asked to look upon the messiness, but query the person who “owns” the desk and he can locate the document immediately.

Similarly, the divided order is where the stresses of life, the messes of living and the chaos of all that must be accomplished in the day-to-day discourse of an individual – from family obligations, work, leisure time, spending time with kids, making a living, paying bills, exercising, keeping up with one’s professional education and obligations – must all be “divided” in order to maintain some semblance of order, and the division itself must be done internally, mentally and within the sphere of private thoughts and unspoken actions; and it is out of the chaos of the world around that the order is imposed by the very division placed within the quietude of one’s consciousness.

Then, of course, complications can occur – that proverbial “last straw that broke the camel’s back” can come sauntering in the dead of night and bring about chaos where chaos once was bridled and restrained.

A medical condition can certainly do that.  For, in many ways, a medical condition is itself chaos defined.  It is an attack not only upon the body, but of the mind as well, and undermines a sense of balance, integrity of self, and self-confidence.

That is why preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS , CSRS or CSRS Offset becomes an external imposition of an order divided from within.  It allows for a hopeful look into a future, where one may be able to escape from the chaotic darkness of the deepening morass arising from work, the problems of the Federal Agency or the U.S. Postal facility, and the constant struggle with pain, paranoia or uncontrollable anxiety; and replaces it with a retirement that allows for a basic annuity that extends until age 62, at which point it is recalculated into regular retirement.

A divided order is thus one more step that needs to be attained in attending to one’s medical condition, and preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application is often the first next step to reaching that goal.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: Of empty promises

What is a promise? Is it binding, and if so, what makes it binding?  Does a written acknowledgment, a memorandum of understand or a memorialization of promises made and assurances conveyed, make a bit of difference?  Why are “eternal” promises so much easier to violate – is it because, as finite human beings, “everyone knows” anyway that we never meant to keep such stipulations made before gods, angels and other sanctified entities?

What about empty promises – those that we know are suspect to begin with, but in a drunken state of euphoria, deliver them with purportedly serious aplomb and regurgitate without hesitation before ceremony and sanctimony coalesce to delightful sounds of quietude where the backside covers the crossed fingers in a crucifix of humor and denial?  Disdain originates from a plenitude of broken promises; and the incremental unease which develops into the angst of quiet fury, directed with a despair permeated upon decay of conscience.

In a time before, when a person’s word needed not a written memorialization; when a handshake solidified unspoken words with a mere nod; and when language stood stalwart against the disputatious sophistry of linguistic gymnasts; by contrast, today we have a population of experienced betrayals, where everyone mistrusts and no one accepts at face value.  Is this merely a reflection of wisdom matured, or of cynicism run amok?  What do we teach our children – to trust selectively, to never accept the words as spoken, or to remain as innocent lambs on the road to the slaughterhouse?

We of this generation know of empty promises and broken dreams, and the sad part of it is, such dismay is based in reality.  Of Prozac, anxiety and childhood despair, there is no replacement of virtue in doing what “feels good” or changing mates as often as we do our underwear.  But, then, we cannot be too judgmental, these days, lest we offend our counterparts and crack the mirror which reflects our own hypocrisy.

And what of Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers?  They have also felt the brunt of empty promises.  This was supposed to be the dawn of a new age, where workers would be treated with respect and dignity, and when a medical condition or a disability intervened, the Federal agency or U.S. Postal Service would “accommodate” the medical condition.  But old habits die hard, and one must always be suspicious that there is a genetic code of ingrained darkness in the core of humanity.

Thus, fortunately, we still have laws which protect against such empty promises – like those pesky laws governing Federal Disability Retirement benefits, protecting Federal and Postal workers from simply terminating a Federal or Postal worker who suddenly cannot perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, because of the onset of a medical condition.  Preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is one way of ensuring that empty promises made, and left unfulfilled, may yet be salvaged by filing an effective OPM Disability Retirement application.

Just a thought, though empty it may well be, like promises left in the silence of a singularly occupied room, uttered to no one in particular, and heard by everyone in muted valleys of numbed acquiescence.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Sedimentary Structures

In interpreting geological formations by natural deposits involving complex strata of ahistorical significance, we are better able to conceptualize the environment, the impact of changes by weather, temperature vicissitudes, and organic alterations whether man-made or neutral in their deliberations. River flows and their swirls of changing directions; droughts, sudden floods, or the soft and natural flow of a forming inlet; these all impact and influence the sedimentary structures which form over time, unnoticed to an ahistorical perspective.

Why do we care of such things?  In the silence of nature and the flow of time, where a fallen tree downed by the directional change of forceful erosion, what difference does the depositing of dirt have upon the salience of human civilization?  As with most things of significance and import, it is the analogy discovered, the metaphor spoken, and the connections we encounter within the linguistic tissues of form-to-thought, reality-to-subjective insularity, and the utter abandonment of the correspondence theory of truth, which make for interest and relevance.

The way we think; our outlook on life; whether we retain a hopeful sense for tomorrow or a bitter despondency lost in yesteryear’s calamity of chosen obsessions; these, in their aggregate, formulate the apothecary of our lives. Building a dam; obstructing the natural flow; altering whether it is multi-directional or unidirectional; these all influence the coalescing of sedimentary structures. By recognizing how stratification of certain minerals dominate over others, we can acquire an abundance of wisdom in protecting our own health and wellbeing.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have come to a point in his or her Federal or Postal career, where a medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal positional duties, it is well to behoove the natural formulation of sedimentary structures — and their relevance upon our perspective and insights.

Sedimentary structures form in certain ways, because we fail to be the vigilant gatekeepers of and for ourselves; and preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal or Postal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is often the first step in making sure that of the deposits we make in life, living and of unwanted soil within our field of fertility, we must first observe the natural flow around us before determine the best course of action in order to preserve the richness for future stratification of sedimentary accumulation.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Medical Retirement: When the superior argument no longer prevails

The potentiality of applying “jury nullification” opened the door to defiance, in a society constructed upon recognition, application and enforcement of “the law”; but of course, one may argue that such wholesale rejection of a conceptual construct deemed immoral or otherwise unfairly prejudicial, is itself a moral judgment which is allowable.

Would anyone argue that a jury which refused to convict during a trial in a repressive and totalitarian regime — say, in North Korea today, or during the Stalinist era — constituted “jury nullification”?  Or, would one simply declare that “the people” rightly and collectively decided to “stand up” against injustice, and applied a higher standard of the law — one which transcends the state’s attempt to impose an otherwise self-declared code of injustice by means of fiat and force?  It all depends upon the perspective; for, when the state empowers a group of individuals to possess, grant and apply the power of judgment rendered in the form of a verdict, then that collectivism of declared consensus constitutes the rightness or folly of a moral code itself.

In the end, the term itself is likely inappropriate; for the concept of “jury nullification” necessarily implies something underhanded or nefarious, as if the “jury” acting to “nullify” the law is somehow suspect, when in fact it is a declaration of rights asserted by means of granted power to do so.  The jury, by definition, is a law unto itself, as recognized by the state, and is therefore wholly independent and cannot be castigated for undertaking the very duty for which it was appointed to perform.

Now, as to whether or not it was receptive to, and embraced a lesser argument, as opposed to a superior one, is a fundamentally different question.  Were emotions swayed?  Did the eloquence of the opposing side overwhelm?  Did rationality and force of evidence persuade, or did the defendant’s mother back in the corner where spectators sat, weep silently and blow her nose into a soiled kerchief just enough to draw the attention of wandering eyes left pondering the fate of a devastated family? And does rationality always have to rule?  By what criteria do we demand that rationality always rule the emotive and appetitive?  Is it based upon the ancient code derived from Plato and Aristotle, of the various parts of the soul where the mind should govern the cosmos of the barbaric nature of our base selves?

But if circumstances and situations rule the day — such that in a “State of Nature” it is more advantageous for an individual to survive by pursuing instinct and animalistic aggressiveness, but in the more refined “Social Contract” basis the forms of civility and restrained interaction becomes the normative and accepted foundation, is not judgment of a fellow man a netherworld of intersecting universes, where the contradictory combining of war (a form thereof, as in a trial) and civility (of a jury deliberating in the quietude of a sequestered room) clash in culminating in a momentous fate of judgment?

The conclusion from modernity has already been rendered, of course; for, in the end, young people today care not for the force of rational argumentation, but rather, whether it “feels good”.  What reverberating consequences does such a force of change have upon society as a whole, and more specifically, for the Federal or Postal worker of today who must consider arguing to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management that the Federal Disability Retirement application should be approved?

Superior arguments, of course, should always be employed; and the Federal or Postal worker should never underestimate the power of legal persuasion, or the citing of relevant laws, statutes and applicable regulations.  But there is a distinction to be made, between demanding and dereliction of decision-making.  The former is to use a hammer; the latter is to posit a systematic methodology of courteously opening the door for recognizing the sunlight of “being right”.

For the Federal or Postal worker who wants to submit an effective Federal Disability Retirement application to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal worker is under CSRS, CSRS Offset or the FERS retirement system, remember that the concept of “jury nullification” applies only when the right to decide is somehow deemed improper or unsanctioned; but when it comes to a bureaucracy which possesses the sole power to decide, it is an inapplicable construct, and must be approached in a manner more akin to the grieving mother whose murderous son suddenly appears with a suit and tie for the first time in his hideous life, and speaks eloquently of his undying love for family and the victim upon whom he perpetrated his crime, and when the wink-and-nod between son and weeping mother remains unnoticed but for the love forged in treachery, justice yet smiles even in verdicts which betray the greater society.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

b