Federal Disability Retirement Law: Innocence & Wonder

The loss of the former results in the disappearance of the latter; for, it is the conditional existence of the former which allows for the latter.  The question in modernity is, Can a child even possess a modicum of innocence these days, in the midst of technological dissipation?  And if the answer is a fervent, “No”, then what chance is there of preserving that wide-eyed characteristic of Wonder — of curiosity compelled by a belief that there is value in the world to search for?

How often have we heard parents say something to the effect of, “I just want my kid to have some sort of childhood to enjoy,” or, “Let kids be kids.  They will grow up soon enough”?

In today’s world where pressures are so persistent to excel, to competitively grow up in order to have the greater advantage of material success, it is a wonder that children have any childhoods at all, as innocence has become equated to a disadvantageous naïveté and wonder a mere byproduct of ignorance.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal Service workers who suffer from a health condition such that the health condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the basic elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the time for innocence and wonder has long passed; for, while you may once have had the experience of both, your medical condition combined with the way that your Agency or the Postal Service has treated you, has likely resulted in a more cynical perspective.

Don’t let that, however, prevent you from reaching the ultimate goal: Of obtaining a Federal Disability Retirement annuity under the FERS system from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.  Contact a Federal Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and return to a time where Innocence & Wonder may still be experienced.

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 Medical Retirement: The Pause Before Advising

That momentary hesitation — is it because the answer is unknown, or because all other factors must be taken into consideration before sound advice is rendered?

If the former, then it is likely bad advice, if rendered regardless; of the latter, it reveals a thought process where all of the avenues to a potential answer, and their natural consequences gleaned through experience of prior similar instances, will likely ensue with what can only be declared “sound advice”.

Advising is what people love to do; unfortunately, it is the rare instance which results in rendering “sound and good advice”.  It is a cheap mode of feeling important and relevant; to render freely one’s opinion and advice on a matter; and even paid advice, whether in the legal field or financial investment arenas, can lead to dire consequences if followed inadvisedly.

The pause before advising — for an experienced attorney, that hesitation is always because the question posed must be seriously considered before rendering advice which is important and relevant to the query.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who need guidance, advice and experience in preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS, contact an attorney who always pauses before advising; for, in the end, the best advice is the one which has first considered all aspects of the query posed, before giving a lifetime of experience in an art form which only rarely approaches science in its certainty.

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.

 

Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Disability Retirement: Village Narrative

When was it lost?  Does it become fractured and irrelevant once a society grows too large, looms too complicated, decides to go off in different directions?

Once upon a time, villages had a specific narrative, identifiable, accepted, the mythology of its unique character.  If you came from Village-X, you knew the narrative — the story of your group, where you came from, what gods controlled the universe, who fought bravely, how you came about.  A stranger from another village had a different narrative; it was called Village-Y-narrative.  They had strange ways.

Perhaps there was trading between the two; sometimes, inter-marriage occurred and the complications of rearranging belief-systems to accommodate any differences had to be allowed for.

In today’s society, the village narrative has all but disappeared.  Not only has it disappeared — but even within the fractionalization, there are further micro-fractures, where no one can agree even upon the most fundamental of core beliefs.  That is when empathy disappears, replaced by laws and statutes to maintain some semblance of order and structure.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition no longer allows for the Federal or Postal employee to perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the village narrative of working as a “team” with the Federal Agency or Postal Unit can no longer remain compatible.

Does the Agency show any empathy?  Or are they simply ignoring the problem?  Will you be placed on a PIP?  Will you be terminated?  Is the “village” out to banish and get rid of you?

Contact a Retirement Lawyer who specializes in OPM Disability Retirement Law.  It may be already time to find another “village”, inasmuch as the current village narrative no longer includes you.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

OPM Disability Retirement: The Unknown of Which We Fear

In childhood, it is the unknown of which we fear; for, we hear the words and sounds around us, the events in other countries of riots, wars and ravages but are too young to place them in the context of our lives.  There is too much information for the youth of today; information that cannot be contextualized or processed without a properly delineated perspective; and so the fears and anxieties become magnified as there are no longer any “age-appropriate” zones of safety.  But that childhood fears were merely relegated to the fear of darkness; that would yet show an innocence that prevails, and understandably so.

In modernity, darkness is the least of a child’s fears; it is the greater world of light that perpetuates the haunting aspects of daily living.  Whether in past years or in the present, it is always the unknown of which we fear — the unknown future, the unknown risks of today; the unknown past that may come to haunt us.

For the Federal or Postal employee who suffers 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, it is still yet the unknown of which we fear — of the future yet to be decided.  Consult with an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and see if some of that unknown of which you fear may be unraveled in the proper preparation and submission of a Federal Disability Retirement application.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire 
OPM Disability Retirement Attorney

   

Attorney for Federal Disability Retirement Claims: The unread novel

Is it as irrelevant as the one that is read but quickly forgotten?

Writers are a funny breed; their very existence, significance and existential relevance depends upon the interests of others.  Isolation is inherent in the vocation itself; for every writer is a singular and lonely depiction of an inner battle of cognitive construction, the soliloquy upon a blank slate endeavoring to create, to master, to show and to imagine; and of what nightmares and horrors the writer must endure in order to transfer self-doubt upon the paper, or the virtual existence that spans the spectrum from despair unto public acknowledgment.

The unread novel exists in drawers and cubbyholes forgotten and unopened; and like Bruno Schulz’ lost novel, The Messiah, the shot that killed before the fruition of greatness came to be may reverberate with a nothingness that no one knew, precisely because, to not know something is to not experience that which cannot be grasped, where ignorance is merely the negation of an emptiness never experienced.  Which is worse — to be never read, or to be read and forgotten, or to be read, remembered, then slowly dissipate from the minds of appreciation over an anguished length of time?

The unread novel sits like the individual who once was recognized — a solitary figure who was once appreciated, known, recognized and even sometimes applauded; then the starkness of anonymity reminds us all that such recognition is fleeting, temporal, like the winds of history that grant accolades to rising stars only while the smile lasts and the last salute is given to the parade that slowly fades.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, where the medical condition has begun to impact one’s ability and capacity to perform all of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal job and positional duties, the feeling that the Federal or Postal worker undergoes is often likened to the unread novel that sits in the drawers of anonymity.

Perhaps you were once recognized and appreciated; now, it is as if the medical condition itself has become an infectious disease that everyone else is loathe to catch.  The Federal Agency or the Postal Service is beginning to treat you like The Plague.  You fear that your career — like the Great American Novel that was once thought to be a success — is coming to an end, and the harassment and furtive looks have become emboldened in a way you previously could not have imagined.

It is then time to begin to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether you as a Federal or Postal employee are under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.  For, like the unread novel, the drawer within which you sit in solitary despair will not make the unfamiliarity of it become a great success; that, in the end, is a decision only you can make, as to a future where the unread novel remains so, or a step forward to change the course of human destiny.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement under FERS & CSRS: Cherishing moments

In the end, isn’t that all that we have?  We like to speak in terms of vast, grandiose expanses of time, where we create plans that span a lifetime, or refer to wide swaths of historical periods as if we have any conception at all about time, segments of memories or even of the memories already forgotten.  Old men and women reflect back and regret the time lost; middle-aged people who are caught up in the race to make up for lost time, continue on the treadmill that never seems to lessen; and the young — they just race through it as if there is no tomorrow.

Cherishing moments — how does one do that in a fast-paced world of technological amplification where everything moves at a hare’s pace when the yearning is for the tortoise’s calm?  Life comes at us with a fury and an unrelenting torrent of rain and winds; and when we try and raise the umbrella or walk at an angle to counter the ferociousness, we merely get left behind.

How is it that “memories” become more significant and important in our lives than the actual “living” of an episodic slice of our daily existential encounters?  At what point does one take precedence over the other?  Is there an imbalance of disproportionality that occurs — as in, spending more time “remembering” as opposed to “living”?  Is a person who watches the same move over and over, day after day, any different from the one who constantly daydreams about a moment in his or her life, over and over again, repetitively in a lost morass of memories unrepentantly consumed? What is the proper balance and mixture — somewhat like a recipe for a homemade pie or a birthday cake — between the ingredient of cherishing moments and the reality of daily living?

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 problem with cherishing moments — any moments — is that the impediment of the medical condition itself will not allow for any enjoyment at all, whether of memories remembered or of life to be lived.  That is when you know that there is a disequilibrium that needs to be corrected.

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, may be the first, albeit tentative step, towards attaining a level of normalcy where cherishing moments is a choice to be taken, and not as a regretful nightmare uncontrollable in the restless dreams of a forsaken career.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Those bare moments of honesty

They come in flashes of rare instances; sometimes, in a more subtle manner, like encroachments by a nimble adversary; at others, tantamount to ugly boils erupting in the middle of one’s forehead while interviewing for a sought-after position.  We cloak ourselves in lies, more lies, and obfuscations wrapped in greater deceptions of self-doubt.

Sometimes, such concealment is necessary; for, perhaps it is an evolutionary tool in order to merely survive.  Those who have lost such capacity may have to face the harsh realities of day-to-day living, and simply go mad; others who cannot defer the decadence of self-realization may react by engaging in binges of bifurcated pigeonholing and compartmentalizing of walls constructed to deny access to intercontinental flights of fancy.

Heidegger would say of it that we are merely procrastinating the inevitable.  The reality of Being is too harsh; projects and made-up, artificial distractions allow us to avoid the revelation of the ugliness of the world, or at least delay its unconcealed rupture for the time being.

But medical conditions shatter that quietude of avoidance.  For, their reality and intentional rudeness in deliberate interference in our daily lives presents itself like the fat uncle who takes up the entire couch without asking; the ugly displacement of pleasurable moments cloaked in deceptive avoidance of self-awareness makes for an elephant which is whispered about but nobody notices.

Becoming lost in virtual reality; Facebook friends whom we never meet; Twitter followings which meander in meaningless platitudes; the very lack of substantive discourse in our lives belies our greater efforts to avoid and confound.

Does it matter that the team one roots for will have lost on Sunday, or that the Lottery Ticket was a wasted twenty-dollar bill flushed down the toilet?  Mere distractions become central in lives of desperation and quiet moments of weeping in the dark caverns of lost thoughts, sought-after childhoods and forgotten moments of honesty and carefree pictures frozen in time.  But it is the ugliness of troublesome truths which reveal themselves to haunt and nudge.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal Service workers who must face that challenge, the reality of life occurs when the medical condition prevents the Federal employee or Postal worker from continuing to perform the essential elements of one’s positional duties in the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service.  At some point, serious decisions must be made.

The clash between avoidance and reality comes to a flashpoint of sorts, and procrastination of the delayed cloaking of harshness can no longer be discreetly catalogued.

The page is opened upon us, and we must ask:  Can I continue in this same way?  Is the Agency or the Postal Service considering termination?  Will I become a young retiree in a 90-year old body if I struggle to remain?  And those haunting images of 40-some-year-old former football players in wheelchairs and walking like senile old men — does that portend of images for my life in the not-too-distant future?

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 a viable alternative to allowing for those bare moments of honesty to become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Indicators mean something, and when one’s body, mind or soul shout within the quietude of one’s nudging conscience, it is time to consider preparing, formulating and filing for OPM Disability Retirement benefits, lest those bare moments of honesty become lost in the forgotten crevices of secluded fears relegated to the growing trash heaps of avoided realities.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: Plan of Attack

Every battle requires a “plan of attack”, and preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is no less an “adversarial” process than a lawsuit filed with the local county court.

One may embellish and deny by describing the process as “nothing more” than an “administrative” procedure, where the deciding agency is merely reviewing the components for “eligibility requirements” and conformance to entitlement regulations, but one needs only to be denied a OPM Disability Retirement application to realize that it is a legal process just like any other.

That is why, when a Federal or Postal employee’s Federal Disability Retirement application is denied at the First Level of the process, the usual response is tantamount to that of an opponent who lacked a plan of attack and quickly disburses in a retreat of panic.

Denials should be expected, and not necessarily because of a lack on the part of the Federal or Postal applicant, but because the “enemy” will counterattack and “win” some “battles”.  The army which never considers a setback is one which advances with such arrogance that the hubris of pride defeats without the enemy ever needing to lift a finger.

For those Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who filed for OPM Disability Retirement benefits, and who thought that his or her Federal Disability Retirement application was an unconquerable force of inevitability, the good news is that there is another day yet to come for a new battle, and even another beyond that, where a singular defeat means merely a chance to regroup for another day’s skirmish in order to win the ultimate prize:  the war itself.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

OPM Disability Retirement: Those Fall Leaves

The time of change and spectrums of colors beyond mere rainbows of solitude; it is often poetically described as the season of deterioration, of old age before the winter of mortality.  Fall brings about a freshness of cooler winds, a precursor of foretelling that those dog days of summer have come to an end.  Ever look at the fallen leaves and mistake them for something else — an animal, perhaps, or a figure of caustic imagination?

Such projections erupting from our own fears and hesitancy reveal the true state of our being.  The leaves bring color to an otherwise dreary existence; once fallen, they can take on whatever hopes, dreams and fears we wish to accentuate.  Looked upon from a distance, shapes of crinkling leaves can take on forms enhanced through our imaginations.  It is only when we deliberate, walk up closer, and verify, that we can ascertain with a semblance of certitude that it was not what we thought, or that it constituted nothing more than our fears gone awry.

Fear and imagination tends to do that; until we take affirmative steps to ascertain, verify and concretize, what is left in a muddle remains so.  For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who sit and fret over one’s future because of a medical condition which has begun to prevent the Federal or Postal worker from performing all of the essential elements of one’s positional duties, the fear of future forebodings becomes an exponentially-enhanced subject of terror and trembling, so long as pragmatic steps of self-affirmation are avoided and neglected.

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, may seem like a small step, or perhaps a too-large one in supposing an end to an otherwise successful career.  But sitting in fear and loathing is never a solution; one must, by affirmative steps and bounds, break the isolation of fear and move forward with life.

As the fallen leaves of Fall are merely a season of change, and the colors which surround the spectrum of life’s spector, to remain as a spectator to the vastness of change is to allow for the vicissitudes of misgivings to shake the essence of purpose.

Like the crinkled leaf which sits afar and takes on a gargoyle-like appearance, it is only when those first steps are embraced towards ascertaining, verifying and establishing that the very fears we once took comfort in, are but mere wisps of whispers dissipating into oblivion, once we take those initial steps in preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through OPM, in order to defy the foreboding of the winter season yet to come, but where our future lies not in fear but in securing a semblance of stability through a benefit available but for want of hesitation.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire