Federal Disability Retirement Benefits: Escaping reality

In some sense, everyone does it; in another, no one can.  For, in a general, generic meaning of the term, to “escape reality” is to merely engage in an activity that allows one to take a break from the ordinary and mundane, as in going to a movie, watching television, playing a video game or engaging a game of chess. In the same vein of meaning, however, one could argue that such leisurely pastimes constitute a reality no less real than working, dealing with life in other ways and attending to one’s daily duties and obligations – it is simply in a different “form”.

Daydreaming, getting lost in an imaginary world through reading a book, of even sleeping – these also constitute a form of “escaping reality”, if the term implies a narrow meaning manifesting the daily grind of work, family and surrounding obligations.  Going to school, surfing the internet or concocting plans for grandiose schemes – these, too, can be considered “escaping reality”, inasmuch as they do not put food on the table or pay bills; and thus do we face the reality that people possess different meanings when they make critical remarks that are triggered to demean an activity by making the charge that engaging in X is nothing more than an attempt to escape reality.

There are, of course, true escapes that are harmless, and those that, if entertained over too long a period of time, can become an entrenched harm that may be irreversible.  Taking a dream vacation to an isolated island deep in the Caribbean Isles can be a healthy escape from the daily reality of work and exhaustion; imagining a life different from one’s own, through a limited period of daydreaming, may be an acceptable form of transcending the turmoil of a day’s trial; but creating a world where one’s loved one, lost from the reality of this mortal world, is still present through one’s imagination and will of existence, may be considered a sickness when it begins to impede the ability and capacity to take care of one’s own needs.

There is a fine line between healthy escapes and detrimental plunges into the surreal world of the imagination.  How one takes upon the challenges of a medical condition is often a delicate teetering amidst the boundaries of health and unhealthiness.  We would all like to will away medical conditions, but the reality is that the real-ness of the injured, sick or otherwise deteriorating body, mind or both, cannot ultimately be avoided.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers, the idea of preparing a Federal Disability Retirement application is often a step towards recognizing the reality that there is no curative power that will allow the Federal or Postal employee to continue to work in one’s chosen career, and that preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be ultimately submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is merely a matter of inevitable time.

Delaying the process, procrastinating the preparatory steps, or avoiding the issue altogether – all are a form of escaping reality.  Whether such an escape is a healthy precursor to the reality which must be faced, only the Federal or Postal worker who is engaging such an escape can tell, as the reality of one’s future may rest upon the very escape afforded by filing a Federal Disability Retirement application through OPM.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Rhymeless Poems

When did it happen?  Certainly, by the time E.E. Cummings came upon the scene, with his oddity of typographical stream of consciousness, the acceptance of it had already come to fruition; or, perhaps it was in the translation of foreign such vehicles of linguistic amalgamations – when the first frustrated translator threw up his hands in disgust at a Japanese Haiku or a German verse of too numerous a compendium of throat-clearing consonants, that the advent of the rhymeless poem reached its fulfillment and pinnacle of public acceptance.  Or, maybe we just ran out of words.

Words are funny vehicles of communication.  With facial expressions, the scent of another, the movement of body or a sense of fear, anticipation and the adrenaline of life, one can discern an endless eternity of subtleties that, in their inexhaustible divining of messages sent and received, can further be conjoined, compounded and confounded by the essence of human complexity.  But words are limited to the meanings of each; and in the finite world of vocabularies existent, the rhyming words are that much more delimited.

It is not, as Wittgenstein would point out, something that we can just create out of whole cloth; for, there can be no “private language game” of one, as the very essence of it would be lost in the creation of a singular language game – communication, which is the purpose and teleological livelihood, cannot be justified if no one else understands the word, the greater concept, or the linguistic artifice intended.

Sure, sure – words are created everyday, especially in order to accommodate the growing technology of Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, etc.; and the abbreviated forms of linguistic devices necessitated by text messaging, as well as the diversity of communicating through emoticons, etc., only prove the point:  All such such inventions and convoluted conventions of acceptability have a finite basis in any algorithm created.  In the end, we are just left with more words, and the inability to find that perfect rhyme in a verse of poetic need.   And that is the point, isn’t it?

For the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker, having a medical condition is similar to reaching that point in writing a poem, when the rhyming word can no longer be found.  Life itself is like an endless verse of poetry; we flow along and rhyme from word to word, with a cadence found in maturity of experiences; then, one day, a medical condition develops, and the rhyming verses suddenly pause.  We don’t know what to do.  Search as we may, we cannot find that perfect word, or that acceptable cadence of living life.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, may not be that discovery of the perfect word to end the silence of a rhymeless poem; it is, however, the last word in the verse of a Federal or Postal employee’s career, which may save the day from leaving the empty space blank, and instead, allowing for the next cadence in this continuing drama of verse-filled experiences, to take a leap into a future of security and new beginnings.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement: Metaphor as the antidote to paraphrasis and reduction

The concept is intended to enhance; it guards against the tendency of deconstructionism and self-analysis, where the initial stages of civilization’s cradle of creativity progresses along a historical regression of questioning and results in cynicism.  Paraphrasis — that need to restate but in different words and altered forms — is a tendency of inherent need to understand and comprehend at a lesser level; for, the original is almost always the greater one in comparative analysis and methodological foray.

Reduction is a corollary of paraphrasis — of attempting to whittle words down to a common denominator of meaning, much like Orwell’s expungement of words in his brilliant novel, 1984, where the totalitarian state would systematically extricate and erase previously known words and concepts.  Do concepts exist without words?  Once forgotten, can they be reintroduced into a world devoid of such constructs?  Do some societies view the universe in ways quite contrary to our own, where parallelism of thought and content fail to intersect because the alien nature of “their” way of thinking is incommensurate with “our” way of viewing the world?

Metaphors are meant to enrich and enhance; it is a uniquely human way of perspective and angle, and constitutes the antidote to linguistic reductionism.  For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are struggling to prepare an effective “Statement of Disability” on SF 3112A, one is well-warned and instructed that the use of a tool in language must be approached with caution, but with a delight to inform, convey and communicate.

In the end, the vast array of tools and substantive pouches filled with magical dusts and sprinkling residues of creative myths — all must come down to the proper usage and effective application of words, phrases, thoughts and conceptual constructs.

For the Federal employee and U.S. Postal worker who must formulate an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the manner one approaches the Statement of Disability, the methodology of logical argumentation, and the legal references needed to cite in submitting a winning Federal Disability Retirement application to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, may come down to a mere metaphor as an antidote to paraphrasis and reduction.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: The repairs we need to get to

It may well be a distinction with only a slight difference, as most such conceptual bifurcations tend to be.  In this day and age, we tend to just gloss over the minutiae which used to delight curious minds and pave the pathway for tenured professorships by way of publishing in esoteric journals of the Gestalt conclusions derived in academia — those slight nuances heretofore unnoticed which are suddenly and miraculously discovered by the keen insights of an eccentric perspective.

Thus, in life do we leave many things behind and set aside, for repairs to be attended to at a later time; and like a trail of dust reflected well by Pig-pen in Peanuts, the junk scattered tells of the character of the person, the inner essence of the personality, and the core of a human being’s wants, desires and tendencies of action or inaction.  At the end of one’s life, what does the junkyard of humanity reflect and represent?

We, each of us, create them; of vast reservoirs of rusting appliances, and often unrepairable masses of collected antiquities, where components for any semblance of working order have become obsolete or otherwise unavailable.  Some of those items scattered behind or left asunder, are the “emotional” ones; others, of family ties broken or damaged so severely as to belie any chance of regeneration, where reincarnation in the next phase of life must muse to consider reinvigoration of animation, whence the lifeless form once showed a promise of a future still bright.

We cannot go back and repair everything we have left aside or behind; there simply is not enough time in life in order to do that.  That’s why we left things undone in the first place; time requires prioritization — otherwise, in attempting to do everything, we end up doing nothing.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have, in the last few years, felt the progressive decline of health and the consequences of being unable to attend to the most important of issues facing anyone and everyone — one’s own health — the time to prepare and formulate an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed through one’s own agency (if not yet separated from Federal Service, or otherwise separated for 31 days or more, but not 1 year hence from the date of Federal Separation) and then to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is likely upon and passed beyond the time of prudence.

Junkyards are common sights; some are openly displayed, while others are hidden behind walls and fences; but it is the scattered debris of things unseen, the physical pain and the emotional scars ignored, which need the greatest of care, attention and repair; and for the Federal or Postal employee — whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, who suffers from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing all of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal job — it is well beyond the time to prioritize the central themes of life and living, and get those repairs done which we need to get to, and forget about the peripheral concerns which should have been left behind long ago.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement Benefits for US Government Employees: OWCP Disability

Periodically, a telephone call will begin with the statement that the Federal or Postal worker has been on “Disability” for the past _____ years.  The first question that must be asked is, “Are you speaking about OPM Disability Retirement?”  If the answer is one of confusion or lack of clarity, then a further query must be made, trying to establish whether or not the Federal or Postal worker is speaking about receiving payments from the Department of Labor, Office of Worker’s Compensation.

As it turns out, most people who refer to being on “Disability” often mean that they are receiving Worker’s Compensation.  Once this is established, then it becomes important to know whether or not the Federal or Postal Worker has been separated from Federal Service; and if so, when was he or she separated (because if it has been over 1 year, then it is too late to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the Office of Personnel Management).  

Receiving “disability” is often confusing to the Federal or Postal employee.  A revealing fact is when the individual states that the “Agency put me on disability”.  This normally means that the person is on OWCP.  Or, if you are receiving 75% of one’s pay.  Remember that there is a distinction and a difference between OWCP and OPM Disability Retirement.  The former pays well, but may not last forever.  Indeed, if the latter is not applied for within the time-frame allowed, you will be barred from ever applying for it.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

OPM Disability Retirement: The OWCP Black Hole

Many people rely upon the “generosity” of FECA (OWCP) payments during the period of temporary total disability, and indeed, being tax free and paying 75% of one’s salary (with dependents) or 66 2/3% without, one can easily become reliant upon such benefits. But being on OWCP does not protect the Federal or Postal Worker from being administratively separated from service for extended absences, or for one’s medical inability to perform the essential elements of one’s job, or “unavailability for duty” or other similar basis, to promote the efficiency of the Federal Service.  The agency needs someone to fill the position and do the job.

Normally, at a fairly early stage in one’s period of enduring and suffering from a medical condition or injury, one can assess the nature, extent and severity of the medical condition.  With that in mind, it is a good idea to begin thinking about filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS or CSRS.  The security of OWCP benefits is attractive; however, OWCP is not a retirement address.  FECA will “cut off” the benefits at some point — unless you are somehow lost in the black hole of their payment roster, which happens periodically.  However, there are too many horror stories of a Federal employee who stayed on OWCP, was separated from Federal Service, never filed for Federal Disability Retirement benefits within 1 year of being separated, and then one day received a fateful phone call…

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire