Federal Disability Retirement Claims: Of fortunes unattained

Here, of the story untold:

“He woke up and went into the bathroom, and there found an old man staring at him.  There was no voice that called; no utterance of a salutation so early in the morning.  The corrugated skin of this stranger was pulled back, revealing deep cuts in the rivulets of age where time had taken its toll.  His hair was unkempt; thinning and grey, with speckles of white reaching deep within the roots of timeless agony.

Where had time robbed this pathetic creature, where a lifetime was given as a gift in order to make his fortune, to find his love and to gather his friendships?

It seemed only yesterday that the toddler reached for his parents’ loving arms, and they who looked upon him with kindly affection and whispering, ‘There, there, you have a whole life ahead of you to dream your dreams and reach your goals’, and then the fading summers where life seemed but a dream where oceans divided and manhood arose from the depths of a sea that swallowed me whole.  And when the stranger in the bathroom finally spoke, it had the voice of one who stared back from a mirror that reflected the insanity of myself, old and lost, voicing a soliloquy of loneliness where once my children laughed within a wilderness of a future yet unseen.”

And so it is with many of us; time seems to creep ever so slowly during troubled waters of despair; and then, one morning, we wake up and decades have passed us by.  Did we do all that we wanted to do?  Did we find that love we yearned for?  Did we make that fortune we promised ourselves we would attain, remembering the poverty of our youth and the promises whispered in huddled caves beneath the conscience of our lonely hearts?

Of fortunes unattained, we can always justify by telling another tale: Life is too short to search only for abandoned treasures and, besides, what truly is a ‘fortune’?  Is love of lesser worth than gold in reserve, and does not friendship value greater than a penny saved?  And when compared with one’s health, is fortune amassed of any value if the former is sacrificed for the latter?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, where 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, preparing, formulating and filing 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, is an important step towards reaching those goals yet reconsidered.

Of fortunes unattained — perhaps so; but when one’s health is at stake, all else must become secondary, and for the Federal or Postal worker who can no longer continue in a career which is only exacerbating the deterioration of one’s health, those thoughts of fortunes unattained must by necessity be temporarily set aside and replaced by the wisdom of a more valued existence.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: As life passes by

It seems to come and go imperceptibly; we barely notice; then, one day, we wake up and life has passed by; the past is now an elongated prism through which we judge the remainder of our lives; the present is but the despair we feel because of wasted time allowed to blur beyond into a vestige of forgotten winds; and the future remains as the uncertainty we quivered about before we grew up.

As life passes by, we try and justify; for, language is the means by which we can validate ourselves.  Now, more than ever, it is the gymnast in linguistic contortions that seems to get the most attention, gain the greatest advantage and squeeze out the momentous timelessness.  Look at Facebook, Twitter, and all other social media forums; objectively, it is merely a blank screen where the one-dimensional universe of words and grammatical outbursts are annotated; yet, that is how the self-esteem of the greater society determines worth, relevance and significance.

All the while, however, there are real people with genuine problems, feelings quashed, personalities unnoticed and greatness tethered, that sit in corners of the world awaiting for recognition of singular episodes of kindness and accomplishments.  We can focus too much on ourselves; attend to updating Facebook too often; engage the limited characters of Twitter and worry unceasingly around circles of our own self-importance, and all the while, as life passes by, we remain ensconced in the limited subjectivity of the universe within our own minds.

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 the Federal or Postal job, the danger is that you can continue struggling as life passes by, and not attend to your medical conditions in the very “doing” of daily activities as life passes by, worrying about tomorrow and the next day as life “passes by”, and wasting the time left as the elongated past disappears into the lost memories, like those graveyards that litter the countryside forgotten and overgrown with ivy and sagebrush that obscures the memories of the dead and dying.

Filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted ultimately to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether you are under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, may not be the answer to all of life’s problems, but for the Federal or Postal employee who must get beyond the impact of the medical condition upon the ability and capacity to extend one’s Federal career, it is nevertheless an important component in now allowing important moments – like properly attending to one’s health – as life passes by.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement under FERS & CSRS: Inversion thinking

The dictionary definition often refers to a “reversal” of an opinion, position, order of sequence or relationships between entities, but may also connote the grammatical alteration of the normal sequence in a sentence, such as placement of a verb before its subject.

In modernity, we often hear about the admonishment to “think outside of the box” – and advertisements often try to play upon this concept by declaring some grand secret that is only available to a limited number of people who are smart enough to call in to the station within the next 5 seconds, lest the opportunity of a lifetime be lost (ignoring the fact, of course, as you are sitting singularly in the confined space of your car listening to the radio, that there are tens of thousands of other listeners who similarly have the mistaken belief that being alone in a vehicle listening does not mean the same thing as being the only person hearing the announcement).

The fact of the matter is, that once a person begins to be told to “think outside of the box”, it is already too late; for, inversion thinking must occur prior to everyone else engaging in the herd-mentality of being different.  Being different means doing so before everyone else has similarly become different, which is to say that everyone becomes the same.  At that point, one must try and become different from the collective differences already alluded to, and in so doing, it is already likely that many other people have already considered the next course of mutation and followed a similar suit; and so it goes.

Inversion thinking is just a different way of thinking outside the box; or, one might say, it is the same as thinking outside of the box, only stated in a different way.  We all like to think of ourselves as unique and singular, when in fact most of us are mere figments of an aggregated collectivism.

We all go to the same type of schools; we listen to the radio programs within the restricted airwaves of our communities or at least until the satellite programs expire and the constant flood of offers to extend become so annoying that we go ahead and give that credit card number to pay for programs we never listen to; and the spectrum of information we are bombarded with – from television to movies, internet and Facebook, et al – makes herds of us rather than mavericks upon the great plains of the creative mind.

We are told as we are growing up, how unique and “special” we are, but in the end, inversion thinking is a phenomena that rarely occurs.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are considering filing an effective 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, it is often the thought of being “different” that prevents the Federal or Postal employee from taking that “next step”.  Be not fooled, however; for, from the perspective of the Federal Agency and the U.S. Postal Service, you have already been targeted as “different” because of your medical condition.

Inversion thinking requires taking that next step, and to think “outside of the box”, and preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application is that distinguishing feature of human activity that will require a different kind of approach in order to step into the uncertainty of one’s future.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Faking it

We often judge the complexity and sophistication of a species by evaluating the extent of negative capacities.  Thus are humans considered to be advanced creatures because of the capability of lying, subterfuge, dissimulation, pretense of behavior, and other such undesirable characteristics. But other species can “lie” as well, if one accepts faking matters and circumstances as constituting that sort of advancement of evolutionary behavior.

Predators can “act like” they are asleep, or even dead or noticeably unaware, in order to lure the prey into a somnolence of cautionary approach.  Birds can mimicry others; and chameleons can adapt and change in order to engage in subterfuge.  But the true test of sophisticated advancement is the ability to defy an inevitable reaction to a cause, and to simultaneously suppress it.  As pain is a natural alarm system which the body necessitates a reaction to, so the act of concurrently concealing it requires an enormity of self-discipline rarely found in species other than in humans.

Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition engage in such subterfuge on a regular basis.  Whether in attempting to extend one’s career for a period greater than self-interest, or of necessity to survive among the pack of hyenas comprised of Federal agencies, their cohorts and co-conspirators, the Federal and Postal employee who suffers from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s job, faking it becomes a daily routine requiring self-containment and discipline of an extraordinary capacity.

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, is an avenue of relief where the threshold and intersection between concealment and level of pain can no longer be tolerated.  It is the exit by which Federal and Postal employees find where once there was none.  For, in the end, the predator wounded and laying in wait for the injurious cause to approach with lesser caution, in order for the prey to become the aggressor, the danger is that one may wait too long and bleed to death, and unknowingly reverse the intended fortunes of the day.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement: Extreme Fatigue

The phrase itself can denote at least two connotations of conceptual paradigms, depending upon which word the emphasis is placed upon:  of an overwhelming sense of exhaustion that is experientially devastating to an exponential degree or, that one is so depleted and tired from the constant state of the extreme.

To experience extreme fatigue is to have a medical condition; to be tired of the constancy of crisis after crisis, is to live an existence which cannot be sustained forever.  Both states can be experienced simultaneously, especially when a medical condition occurs, because the debilitating effects of the disability begins to take its toll upon the individual’s mind, body and soul, and further, because outside reactionary influences tend to make an imbalance upon one’s perspective.

For the Federal employee and the U.S. Postal worker who is experiencing both forms of the phrase, it is probably time to consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

When an overwhelming sense of exhaustion and tiredness beyond mere overexertion begins to overtake, it is an indicator that the medical condition is taking its toll.  When the daily circumstances of one’s life tend to be interpreted as a constancy of extremes, like the proverbial “boy who cried wolf” once too often, and the daily events become skewed to such an extent that one becomes overwhelmed by the persistence of events, and where the extraordinary becomes the daily norm, then it is also a sign of portending causes to recognize.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is not an option of the extreme, although it may be one of the few and limited alternatives left for the Federal or Postal worker who has been struggling to maintain a linear level of normalcy for years on end.

Rather, it is a recognition of human frailty, and the limits of endurance, and ultimately a choice of reflective wisdom in recognizing when the extreme of life’s circumstances begin to take its toll, the resulting impact is often the mental, emotional and physical exhaustion beyond mere tiredness, and where the signs become clear that time is not on the side of health, but where health must accept the timeless constancy of changing extremes.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire