Federal Medical Retirement under FERS: The Unsmiling Eyes

It has often been noted that the line between tragedy and comedy is a thin and fragile one; of the farcical uttering of King Lear poignantly and subtly emphasized by the Fool or Court Jester; of the indistinguishable demarcation between madness and sanity; and then, of the unmatched contrast between the lips smiling and the eyes saddened.  The lips can always be forced to curl upward, revealing a smile; but whether such an expression is genuine depends upon the eyes just a few inches above.

The contrast — or the discordance — is like the words of flattery followed by the vengeance of betrayal; what words can fool when actions follow revealing the true intent of man.  It is in that flash of a moment — a handshake and a smile; a short laugh at an allegedly funny joke; or too-hearty a laugh or smile; and yet…. When the eyes remain with saddened shadows but the lips curl into a smile, we become disconcerted because of the discordance between the two.

How can one describe unsmiling eyes?  It cannot be described — for, it is neither a coldness nor blankness; merely, that the brightness of the pupils follow upon a sincere smile of satisfaction, happiness or contentment.  You know of the unsmiling eyes when you see it; it is as if the eyes know other eyes of comity; but when that brightness is dimmed and matches not the sincere smile of giving, you know — or sense — that something is amiss.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who walk around with the smile but with unsmiling eyes, it is often because you are trying to hide the medical condition which is impacting your ability and capacity to perform the essential duties of your position.

If you are contemplating filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under the FERS retirement system from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, contact a FERS Disability Lawyer who specializes in OPM Disability Retirement Law, and consider the pathway forward so that those unsmiling eyes can one day — in the very near future — turn into a consonance with those upward-curling lips called, “A Smile”.

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 Retirement: President’s Day 2022

There have been many of them.  Originally, this holiday was meant to commemorate and recognize our “first” — George Washington, born on February 22, 1732.  It is a habit for nations to acknowledge “firsts”, as well, we do so in our personal lives.  The “first step” of a toddler; the first day of class; the first kiss; the first time-X; and many more, besides.

More recently, the day has come to recognize all of our presidents, good, bad or indifferent.  In modernity, it has come to be a contentious point of conflict: From whether we should celebrate the life of a slave owner, to why we should give recognition to those presidents considered as less than honorable — the spectrum of opinions on the matter remains vociferous and vibrant.

For a democracy (yes, yes, we can quibble as to the difference without a distinction in contrast to a “Constitutional Republic”), perhaps that is a healthy matter, for the raging debate and intellectual discourse is always a positive characteristic reflecting involved citizens.  Regardless, let’s take the day for what it is worth, and enjoy the time remaining in each of our lives by pausing to reflect in these difficult times.

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 Retirement from the OPM: Coils of Hardship

That is often how it feels; of the coils, whether of a spring, of wires, or copper, or even of a rattlesnake that coils; it is the bundling up, the tightening, of energy or anxiousness curling upon itself until the release becomes inevitable.  Hardships and difficult times feel like that; like coils that keep circling upon itself until — like a spring that is compressed together and suddenly let go, the energy released is of an unfathomable force that cannot be mitigated.

Life is difficult and challenging as it is, without the outer world concomitantly crumbling around us.  Whether of financial difficulties, of career problems, of medical conditions that intervene and interrupt — the coils of hardship come upon us without warning or predictability.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition impacts one’s ability and capacity to perform the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the coils of hardships tend to wrap around tighter and tighter: From dealing with the medical condition itself, then with the unreasonable demands of the Federal Agency or the Postal Service; to the profound fatigue felt by the end of each week because of the conflict between the medical condition and the demands of the job, etc.

It may be time to consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS.

Consult with an OPM Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and consider the options available.  It may unfurl the coils of hardship and allow for the release of energies otherwise needing to be relieved.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement under FERS: Revisiting Updike

He wrote about mundane things; of middle class neighborhoods, Pennsylvania towns in which he grew up; farmlands before strip malls replaced them against the skyline of cornfield rows; and of affairs that grew naturally out of a revolution emancipated from the Sixties; of quiet sufferings and the rhythmic monotony of ordinary lives.

John Updike was an “in-betweener” — too young to fight in WWII, too old to have been drafter for the Vietnam debacle; and so he experienced the quietude and normalcy in between the two bookends of this country’s tumult and trials.

Updike was a voice for generations who saw the post-war era, of baby-boomers and American prosperity at its zenith; of the loss of any normative confluence of moral dictum and the abandonment of constraints once imposed by Protestantism.  All, of course, with a twinkle in his eye and a ready smile.  The Internet abounds with photographs of this uniquely American author — almost all with that thin smile as if he was about to share a private joke.

The Tetralogy of the Rabbit novels (actually a quintet if you include the last of the series, a novella entitled “Rabbit Remembered”) evinces a country gone soft after the harsh period of the Great Depression, the Second World War, the Korean conflict and the Vietnam era that undermined the ethical mandates known for generations before, unleashing a liberty of hidden sins like a bubbling cauldron of untamed desires.  But in the end, he is best known for the mundane, the ordinary, and how life in the suburbs of a prosperous nation left an emptiness unspeakable except by a voice given in narrative brilliance, from an author who was a regular contributor to The New Yorker.

Somehow, he made the ordinary seem exciting, even relevant.  By contrast, modernity has focused upon the rich and famous, and of greater unreachable glamour where perfection surpasses pragmatism.  Updike was able to make the commonplace seem important, the ordinary appear significant and the monotony of the mundane as not merely prosaic.  And isn’t that all that we seek, in the end?

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 loss of relevance, the ordinary and the commonplace is what often scares the Federal or Postal employee.

The job itself; the career; the monotonous routine of going to work, yet finding relevance in the act of “making a living” — these were all taken for granted in Updike’s short stories.  That other stuff — of infidelities and dalliances — were a deviation that Updike tried to point out as mere fluff in otherwise ordinary lives; and of medical conditions, they upend and disrupt the normalcy we all crave.

Federal Disability Retirement is a means to an end — of bringing back balance within a life that has become disrupted, but it is a way to bring back order where disruption to the mundane has left behind a trail of chaos.  And to that, the twinkle in Updike’s eyes and the thin smile would tell us that he would approve of such a move which will return you back to a life of mundane normalcy.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Disability Retirement from the Office of Personnel Management: Proteus

In Greek mythology, he is considered as a god of the oceans.  Homer refers to him as the “Old Man of the Sea” and is known for change, adaptation and alteration.  He can alter his shape and appearance, depending upon the circumstances surrounding.  Changing of forms, of course, becomes the essence of Plato’s philosophy, and Aristotle’s later search for that substratum which allows for continuity and stability.

Perhaps the malleability of Proteus is in response to the tumultuous nature of the oceans; one day beset with the calm of quiet tides, and in the next instance, rising and falling with fury by the storms of unpredictability.  To be able to change, adapt and become chameleon-like is to be able to withstand the vicissitudes of life’s misgivings.

That is what we have to do when a medical condition hits us, and impacts one’s career and circumstances — to be like Proteus and have the capacity to adapt and modify the pathways we have followed.  Stability is always a necessary prerequisite for success.  While wide spectrums of change may be called for in the early days of a “start-up” or initiation of a new project, at some point, a calming effect must come about in order for daily living to occur.

Similarly, while youth may allow for the exuberant embracing of daily excitement in change, middle age and beyond yearns for a greater serenity of redundancy.  When a medical condition suddenly and unexpectedly reminds us of our vulnerability and mortality, it is to stability that we cling and not for the inconstancy of the ocean’s fury.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition prompts one to consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS, it becomes necessity to act and think like Proteus — the “Old Man of the Sea” — and to consider a change of careers precisely because an incommensurability has arisen: No longer are the medical conditions compatible with the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, and that is the proof that one must provide to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management in order to fight for, and win, a Federal Disability Retirement claim.

To find out more about the further particulars of winning the Protean battle against the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, it is best to consult with an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Attorney for Federal Disability Retirement Claims: The concise sentence

What is the difference between being concise and performing with precision?  The former is often applied in the universe of words and communication; the latter, in areas where quantitative measuring tools can be determined, such as in science or in mathematical sectors.

We say of a person who speaks voluminously but with little substance that he or she represents the antonym of conciseness; and so a comparison is often made between volume spoken or written and concepts or thoughts conveyed.  Of Literature, most would agree that Hemingway is the representative paradigm of conciseness, whereas Joyce and Faulkner reflect the very opposite, though all three are considered classic and great authors.

Do we excuse such authors as Joyce and Faulkner because, in literature, we tend to focus upon the stylistic brilliance of their writings as opposed to the “meaning” that captures the undercurrent of their works?  In other words, although they may give us “too many” words and thus are, by definition, lacking of conciseness, we nevertheless overlook such imprecision precisely because we do not attribute “amount” as the necessary and sufficient cause of determining the worth of good authorship.

Hemingway used to say that, in writing, he had already formulated each sentence before setting it upon paper, whether in handwriting (a lost art) or at the typewriter (a manual, when those contraptions existed and where the clack-clack of metal keys pounded deep into the twilight of a writer’s life).

Why do we applaud and celebrate the concise sentence?  Does it make a difference whether or not a sentence, say, with 7 words communicates a thought as opposed to a paragraph with a thousand words that conveys the identical conceptual construct?

Take the following 2 examples: 1. Lessening of debt equals wealth. Or, 2: If you have less to owe to others, then it is the same as savings; or, as Benjamin Franklin used to say, a penny saved is a penny earned, and the reality of it all is that we have more to spend and retain wealth, not so much because you have more money, but you have more because less is spent on paying other people your hard-earned dollars.

Now, both sentences convey essentially the same meaning.  The first one, however, is comprised of 5 words. The second one took…many words to communicate the same thought.  Does it matter whether a concise sentence is used, as opposed to one that is not, if the same two convey identically reflective thoughts?

It might make a difference, because of one factor that has not been discussed: Being concise often possesses the added feature of being precise, and precision is important in the accuracy of conveying thought.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are thinking about preparing, formulating and filing 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, there is a dual-key component to preparing the SF 3112A, Applicant’s Statement of Disability: Be concise, but do not forego length for completeness.

In other words, being concise in order to convey the proper information is important; but, at the same time, do not sacrifice wordiness just because of the limited “boxes” that are provided on SF 3112A.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire
Postal & Federal Employee Attorney

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Different hats, many roles

We all wear them, don’t we?  Husband, parent, worker, co-worker, supervisor, babysitter, grandparent; or, to remain neutral and non-sexist, wife, mother, worker, co-worker, supervisor, babysitter, grandparent, etc.  There, we have dispensed with any allegation that we have not been fully “balanced” in our perspective, allowing for an all-inclusive approach so that no one feels left out.

Yet, if you closely scrutinize the “list” that was previously posited, you will find the slight nuance of a difference between the two – instead of the neutral “parent”, the word “mother” was unscrupulously inserted, and those who are hypersensitive may want to shout, scream and otherwise pour out a stream of invectives in alleging that such a differentiation in the distinction between “parent” and “mother” reveals an underlying motive, unseen and concealed baseness that betrays a discriminatory or biased intent in the writer of such a list.

Such subtle distinctions are supposed to “uncover” and reveal that which was previously skillfully (or not so skillfully) disguised and only subconsciously manifested in an accidental revelation not previously presumed.  But is this fair?  Does the mere wording based upon previously-accepted normative paradigms necessarily compel a conclusion of subjective intent?  Or, should it instead merely trigger an intermediate step of clarification?

Clarity, of course, is the foundation of communication, and wearing different hats in many roles can often confuse the acuity of defined roles.  For instance, does the Federal or Postal employee who is “disabled”, does he or she have certain “rights” that can be protected?  Does a request for an accommodation have to be submitted before a Federal Disability Retirement application can be filed, or is submission of a requested completion of SF 3112D sufficient to satisfy that legal criteria?  Does the “different hat” that the Federal Disability Retirement applicant play – of a “disabled applicant for OPM purposes – mean that there is now a “different role” that the Agency must play, or that OPM must recognize during the process?

We like to think that while the world around us changes, we remain steadfastly “constant” in who we are and what we stand for; but the reality is that, when a medical condition strikes at the heart of a person’s occupation, preparing 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, requires at the outset when we have to wear different hats, the accompanying different roles will require a reassessment as to the viability of what our next steps will be, especially when preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: The Misfit

The herd mentality must of necessity have a survivability factor; otherwise, there is little to explain the illogical repetition of the historical recurrence of human folly for behavioral anthropology.  In the modern era, being “different” is a sign of rebellion, and the cultural tidal wave of the Sixties in altering the normative landscape of music, art, religion and social customs, revealed the pinnacle of self-destructive behavior — until it became clear that being a misfit itself was merely the convention.

Behaving “normally” means that one does not make “waves”; in a highly bureaucratized society, the importance of non-innovation and complete compliance is regarded as sacrosanct.  Loud, boisterous behavior; conduct outside of the normative inflexibility of societal perspectives; that which is acceptable as quirkiness or eccentricities, as opposed to destructive explosions of tendencies bordering upon insanity; the invisible line between the misfit and clinical commitment to a psychiatric facility is a thin reed, indeed.

Often, however, it is uncontrollable circumstances which impose upon an individual the unwanted label of being an “outsider”.  Medical conditions often have a tendency to promote such a state.  It is like being labeled a plague-carrying contagion by the CDC; once whispered, the rumors begin to spread.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to prevent one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s job, being labeled a misfit becomes a “given”. Others begin to shy away from an association; some are told bluntly not to have contact with “that one”.

Loss of normative acceptance within any community or society is an important factor for success; somehow, despite all of the legal safeguards, EEO regulations and protective statutes applying to disabled individuals, the herd mentality of yore nevertheless prevails.  For Federal and Postal workers, the only pragmatic exit is to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

Is it a retreat or an escape?  Not really; rather, just a means of looking out for one’s own best interests.  The medical condition itself should always be paramount in considering one’s life; attending to it properly means that one must have the time and energy to treat the underlying malady; and continuing in an employment atmosphere where acceptance is avoided, and empathy is rare, is also an unstated definition of engaging in self-flagellation.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement Benefits: Dawn’s Transition

In the calm of morning darkness, when the stillness of winter whispers a hushed tone of quietude just before the first break of dawn, one’s perspective falls askew amidst the shadows and desolation of winter.  Is that a rock or a dead bird, frozen in the stillness of winter’s despair?  Was the movement behind the trees a reflection, or just the first faintness of dawn’s exposure?  Perspectives are funny glazes; a once familiar landscape can be frighteningly unfamiliar within the dark chasms of one’s own mind.

Then, almost imperceptibly, the light of dawn begins to pervade, and that which once appeared strange and foreboding, takes on the familiarity of known objects, recognizable forms, and identifiable shapes.  We live by light, and light is the friend of our fanciful imaginations gone awry by fear and loathing.

Medical conditions have a similar subtlety, much like the light of dawn:  they slowly creep upon one, until the debilitating impact is revealed when just a moment before, the fear of darkness was overwhelming.  But just as the morning glow of the rising sun will bring warmth and a promise of openness, so the hope underlying any conflict in life must be placed within a context of future castings.  Hope is for the future, as light is a diminishment of a present or past darkness.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition,  present circumstances are often like the overwhelming and foreboding sense of morning darkness before the dawn of the rising sun; it portends yet of a future unknown, and a fate yet to be decided.  That is why it is important to “let go” of those things of which one has no control, and concurrently, to affirmatively take steps towards the familiarity of that which is known.

Federal Disability Retirement benefits, filed through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is a “known” quantity.  Yes, it is a difficult administrative process and procedure to engage; yes, it is a bureaucratic morass of unquantifiable proportions; but it is a necessary step for those Federal or Postal employees who find themselves with a medical condition which begins to prevent the Federal or Postal employee from continuing in the positional slot of one’s Federal or Postal job.

As the allegory in Plato’s Republic tells the story of the enslaved shadows struggling in the darkness of the Cave, so the Federal or Postal employee who looks up at the opening beyond, to the light of dawn, must surely recognize that the fear and loathing felt in the shadows wavering in that moment before dawn’s glory, is but a temporary point in fate’s cradle, just before the brightness of one’s future is revealed in a time and place yet to be destined for the glory of summer.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire