Federal Disability Retirement: Different Approaches

There is a difference between the ‘How’ and ‘Why’ of things — “How something is done” is quite different from “Why something is done.”

One can argue that the ‘Why’ of something should logically precede the ‘How’, for the meaningfulness attached will motivate as to the mechanical doing of it; whereas, others will propose that one should simply follow Nike’s oft-repeated logo — “Just do it” — and in the act of doing it, the meaningfulness of the activity will naturally follow and be discovered.

Ultimately, they represent different approaches, and may even be characterized by different personalities.  The one who simply charges forward without purpose or meaning may be superficially identified as a ‘pragmatist’ of sorts, while the one who first ponders the “Why” of everything may require a ‘spiritual’ source in everything before proceeding.

In the end, however, the underlying source of everything returns us to that what Viktor Frankl identified as the central human motivational force — the paradoxical search for a life’s meaning.  The importance of the ‘Why’ cannot be ignored; and as science can only point to the ‘How’ of anything, the emptiness of an unanswered ‘Why’ will often paralyze us.

Life is difficult as it is, with calamities and unexpected twists and turns along the way, and the fragile state of our health can be devastating without having an answer as to the ‘Why’ of everything.

For FERS Federal employees and U.S. Postal Service workers who suffer from an chronic injury or other condition and are forced to make a major decision moving forward, preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management may be one of the biggest fights of your life, and while a FERS medical attorney may not be able to answer the more important question as to the ‘Why’ of what has occurred, it is the more pragmatic ‘How’ which may be needed, for the time being.

Sometimes, the different approaches require a priority of answers in a sequence less than optimally answered, and in the case of filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under the FERS system with OPM, it is the question of ‘How’ which must take precedence.

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.

 

Federal Disability Retirement: The Silence of Cemeteries

Whatever your theological foundations, the cemetery is a reminder that we return to the earth from which we came.  And the visitors to that place called “a cemetery” — the evocation of memories, of lives once shared, of a conversation and a soliloquy with those who have gone; it is a place of comfort whether you believe in the afterlife, of spirits and ghosts, or of nothing at all.

Sometimes, in the rural lands we pass so quickly by, you can see the old family cemetery lost in the overgrown weeds and woods of timeless echoes; or where new developments have cast them into roadside byproducts overshadowed by buildings and new houses; and where once they held a prominence in people’s lives, cemeteries have become vestiges of a world now too modern to notice.

It is well that cemeteries remain silent; for, if they were to speak, even in a whisper of barely audible voices, they would tell you of past regrets, and where time slipped away in foolish endeavors where people forgot about other people.  The silence of cemeteries betrays the agony of regrets throughout the long march of history’s cruelty.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal Service workers who suffer from a medical condition where the medical condition no longer allows you to continue in your career of choice, it is likely time that you considered your own health and well-being.  Preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application under the FERS system does not require that you are one step closer to the silence of cemeteries, but it does certainly remind you of your mortality and the health which is otherwise deteriorating.

Contact a FERS Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and consider whether or not the silence of cemeteries might not be a reminder that our own health is what we take for granted, too often.

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: Short Memories

It is good that we have short memories — or choose to, by not studying history.

Why did Hobbes characterize Man’s life as being “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”, if there wasn’t some grain of truth to it?  Yes, it was a description of man in his natural and mythological “state of war” before the protective walls of government were formed; yet, even in modernity, a short look at the war in Ukraine reveals how fragile is the line between civilization and barbarism.

It is with the tool of short memories which allows for the armament industry to refer to patriotism and national pride; and it is by shuttling aside our wounded young men and women that we can continue to engage in lost causes and endless wars.  The lessons of history are never strong enough to counter the appeal to do it “better” or “right” the next time, and so the short memories we posses become the fodder for tomorrow’s persuasion.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal Service workers who suffer from a medical condition, and believe that human empathy and compassion by bureaucracies ever existed in the history of the universe, short memories will likely get you into trouble.

Federal Disability Retirement is a benefit which is available if your medical condition prevents you from performing one or more of the essential elements of your job, but if you think that the U.S. Office of Personnel Management — the agency which makes a decision on all FERS Disability Retirement applications — will simply grant you your request without a fight, then your short memory will likely result in a Denial at the First Stage of the process.

Contact a FERS Disability Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and let not your short memory be the downfall of an otherwise viable case for Federal or Postal Disability Retirement benefits.

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: Understanding, Comprehending, Applying

Is there a definitional distinction between the first two?  And, must one of the two first be satisfied before the third can be employed?  Should the sequence of the first two words be switched?  In other words, does “comprehending” come before “understanding”?  Can you comprehend something without understanding it?  Or, conversely, can you understand something without comprehending it?

The semantic debate can focus upon different aspects of the words.  For example, the term “comprehend” implies a more expansive concept than the word “understand” — and thus the related term, “comprehensive”, which encapsulates a greater bubble of knowledge.  On the other hand, the word “understand” implies a finality — the end result — as in, “Yes, now I understand”, whereas “comprehend” may infer the “process” of reaching that understanding, as in, “Yes, I comprehend it, now, and finally understand what you are saying.”

And the term “applying”?  That is the act of showing that you both comprehend and understand the concept, by actively engaging it with the objective world.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition and need to apply for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS, the need to comprehend and understand at least part of the process of Federal Disability Retirement is a “must”; to apply it, however, you should contact an OPM Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, lest you fail to understand or only partially comprehend the complexities of the application of the laws governing Federal Disability Retirement.

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.

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Control Over

There are certain things we have control over; others, merely a spattering of influence; and still others, none at all.

It is often a dictum of life that “happiness” is the capacity to recognize those very categories over which we have control, and those where we have absolutely no control over.  Why?  Because frustration erupts or otherwise builds up around our attempt to maintain control over that which we have absolutely no control over.

Babies and toddlers, we have quite a bit of control over; teenagers, merely some exerted influence; but of adult children who wish to go their own way and ignore the experience of past generations — we have absolutely no control over.  We have limited control over the car we drive — but no control over idiot-other-drivers who also occupy the roads.  We have absolutely no control over the paradigmatic metaphor of sitting atop a mountain and watching two trains below heading at a high rate of speed towards one another on the same railroad track — and it is here that one’s frustration can overwhelm us.

Medical conditions, likewise, are something which we have no control over.  Filing for Federal Disability Retirement under FERS through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management because of a medical condition — well, that is something we have some control over, and it is often helpful to hire an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law in order to exert some greater control over a bureaucratic process which may at first light appear arbitrary, capricious and without any logical sense.

Now, that is the very definition of frustration — of a process which you have no control over, and that is the reason why you should contact a lawyer who specializes in the process of Federal Disability Retirement.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

OPM Medical Retirement Legal Representation: Inertia

It is the comma before death, the pause before becoming lifeless.  For a living entity, it is tantamount to self-destruction.  It is the point of inactivity and the silence of the moonscape where life perhaps once was, but the dust which settled has been there for quite a bit of time.

Inertia is not the natural state, but an unnatural one when life is at stake.  Observe the birds and their activities; the crocodile who lays still at the bottom of a bog, only to suddenly lunge for its prey who considered that the water’s inertia was a safe haven of seeming quiet; or the constant and perpetual motion of a squirrel who seeks the nut dug and safely hidden the previous week or month.  In all, the negation of inertia is life itself.

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, inertia constitutes the progressive decline of one’s past history of productivity and career.

Countering that inactivity — in other words, to fight against inertia — is to seek a different career, a diverging path and an alternate course of living; and filing for Federal Disability Retirement is one option to consider.

Call a Disability Retirement Lawyer who specializes in FERS Disability Retirement and consider the benefits of rebutting the progressive inertia of a medical condition.  For, inertia is the rule against life; productivity, the law of living nature.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

FERS Disability Retirement for Federal & Postal Employees: Pegged

It normally has a negative connotation; rarely, a positive one.  One is not found to be “pegged” as a brilliant X or as a gentleman (or woman); rather, the “pegging” that occurs is more often than not of a reputation of denunciation.  X is pegged as lazy; Y as a shirker; and once identified as such, you are the outsider, the non-member, the one who becomes ostracized and tagged with suspicion and contempt.

Funny, how empathy may have preceded it; but then, empathy only lasts for so long in human beings, as patience is indeed a virtue which cannot withstand the test of endurance.

Federal and Postal workers who have a medical condition may have evoked some sympathy from coworkers, supervisors and the Federal Agency’s managers — for a time.  But after a short period of an empathetic response, you are expected to “rejoin the team”, as the saying goes, and get back to “accomplishing the mission” (as another saying similarly goes).  Otherwise, you are pegged as “that one” — the one who creates a burden for the rest of the Agency because your work must be taken up by others.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS because you have been pegged as “that one”, consult with a Federal Disability Retirement Lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law.  Being pegged is one thing; being terminated or placed on a PIP is quite another; and if either are in danger of occurring, you will need to take the next step and take the chance that you might be pegged as a Federal Disability Retirement annuitant.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: The Lie of Agnosticism

Bertrand Russell was famous for it (who would not be — of a tall, slender intellectual with a shock of white hair with that image of a long-stemmed pipe puffing with short bursts of tobacco smoke trailing pervasively behind between haltingly muttered sentences of profound logical confusions?); most of us are lulled into it; and the unwary may think that it is a more intellectually honest position to take, where neutrality stuck between traditionalists and the fervency of iconoclasm is preferable if only because avoidance of unpleasantries often directs of intents and motivations.

Yet, look beneath the surface: Russell certainly wrote and lectured enough against the existence of a supernatural being, as opposed to advocating on behalf of evidence supporting the existence of God.  Countless essays and arguments critical of the illogic inherent in Aquinas’ famous “5 Arguments” or Anselm’s Ontological Argument and — of more modern vintage, Kurt Godel’s formal argument (that is if we can even understand the mathematically complex propositions posited by Godel, who stands apart, along with his friend Einstein, in comprehending the mysteries of the universe) are propounded by Russell, with nary a sentence in support.

Most agnostics are atheists; they just don’t want to be bothered by being confronted with that fact.

Medical conditions are like the clinging to agnosticism: We want to avoid the direct assault and confrontation, and so we keep procrastinating, avoiding and delaying.  Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS is like the conversion of an agnostic to the reality of atheism, or its antonym: The reality of recognizing that we can no longer avoid.

Consult with an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law; at a minimum, you can see whether you are truly an agnostic, or merely ensconced in the Lie of Agnosticism.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: Conditions of Necessity

What are the conditions that make for necessity?  At what point do we judge that an action, a set of utterances or a demand of this or that is “necessary’?  What constitutes the conditions for necessity and are they different for different people?

In other words, is there a tolerance level for Person-X that is distinguishable and qualitatively identifiable than from Individual-Y, such that what creates a condition for necessity for X may make for a yawning indifference for Y?  Do some marriages last longer — in accordance with the vows of fidelity and honoring — because of tolerance by one spouse or the other?  Are there criteria and principles that override, somewhat like what George Harrison’s wife once said in an interview that the key to a long marriage is “not getting a divorce” — meaning, no matter the extent of infidelities or breach of marital vows, if you simply tolerate all such violations, then the conditions of necessity will never arise?

Is that what happens to Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who continue to remain silent, slowly dying a quiet death because of a medical condition that few know about, fewer still would even notice, and almost no one cares a twit about?  Do they continue to kill themselves quietly, pushing themselves through the pain and agony of a medical condition, and denying that the conditions of necessity have risen to a level where tolerance isn’t even a question, anymore?

Conditions of necessity — at what point do they rise to a level where it becomes unavoidable that filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits has been reached and tolerating the symptoms of one’s medical conditions is no longer endurable?

Filing for FERS Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is a long and complex administrative process, and when the conditions for necessity arise to a level where it becomes critical, it is a good idea to consult with an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, lest the conditions of necessity become further complicated such that the bureaucratic morass of a Federal OPM Disability Retirement application becomes further entrenched in the intolerable conditions of necessity.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement from the OPM: Expectations

What are they?  Is it something that we place upon ourselves, or merely the burden of what others have said?  Are there implied ones as opposed to direct and blunt ones?  Do they scar and damage throughout our lives, based upon the haunting sense of what we believe our parents demanded?  Are expectations the cumulative juncture caught between our own dreams, the demands of parents, and what we believe society considers success or failure?

Do we carry them about without an awareness of their influence, forgotten in the closets of our memories until psychoanalytical triggers suddenly bring them to the fore and where we suddenly blurt out, “Oh, yes, that is where it all comes from!”  And what happens when reality blunders upon expectations and the two conflict within the agony of our lives — do we (or more appropriately put, can we) abandon them and leave them behind in the ash heaps of discarded disappointments?

And when do we become “smart enough” to realize that the old vestiges of expectations need to be reevaluated and prioritized, and not allowed to remain as haunting voices that we no longer remember from whence they came, but remain as unwanted guests within the subconscious purview of our daily existence?

Expectations — we all have them; but of priorities in our lives, we rarely reorganize them in order to meet the present needs of our complex lives.

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 job and position, it may be time to re-prioritize those expectations that one has about one’s career, one’s future, one’s…life.

Expectations can be a positive force — of placing demands that spur one towards heights previously unimaginable; but that which is a positive force can turn upon itself and become a negative influence, especially when the check of reality fails to make one realize that priorities must be reassessed based upon the changing circumstances that life itself brings about.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits because of one’s deteriorating health may not be what one ever “expected” — but, then, all expectations have always been conditional in the sense that the demands made depended upon circumstances remaining the same.  When circumstances change, expectations must similarly adapt.

Preparing and submitting an effective Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS, through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, may seem like a lowering of one’s expectations; yet, as it was always conditional upon the state of one’s health, a concomitant alteration of one’s expectations must meet the reality of one’s changed circumstances.

That is the reality of life’s lesson: Prioritize — health, family, career and the changing levels of expectations.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire
Postal & Federal Employee Retirement Attorney