FERS Disability Retirement: The Hope Next Door

Hope is the basis of life prolonged; it is why people buy lottery tickets, go to sleep soundly with an expectation that tomorrow will be different; and that, like the old quiz-shows of choosing “Door Number One, Door Number Two, or Door Number Three…” — we retain a hope that life will present us with the good luck, tomorrow or the next day, to choose the right “door” for our lives.

Few of us are smart enough to think in terms of Bertrand’s Box Paradox — presented as a veridical paradox in elementary probability theory.  We are rarely as rational as to embrace life in such a calculating, methodical or mathematical manner.  Instead, most of us blunder through where hope = ongoing existence, even if in reality we know that situations and events don’t often change no matter how hard we try.

Society as a whole — of governments and the Age of Therapy — perpetuates the concept of “the Hope Next Door”.  Politicians running for the Senate, House or state positions make promises all the time, knowing that he or she will merely be one representative within a cauldron of many, and will never be able to pass any legislation because there will never be a consensus enough to do so.

But words have a powerful effect in engendering the hope next door; somehow, we tend to be gullible no matter how many times we get duped.  Thus, the famous quote normally attributed to the greatest showman on earth, P.T. Barnum, that there is “a sucker born every minute”.  Why such gullibility?  Because, without hope, existence itself would be too bleak to go on; and thus do politicians, used-car salesmen and con artists sell not promises, but hope.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition and need to file for Federal Disability benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the Hope Next Door may well be to obtain an approval for a Federal Disability Retirement annuity, so that you can focus upon regaining your health.

Contact a FERS Disability Retirement Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and look for the Hope Next Door that is real, and not merely as a chimera sold as snake oil or words of eloquence.

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.

 

OPM Disability Retirement under FERS: When Fluff Rules

When fluff rules, one wonders at the credibility of the entire endeavor.  When fluff rules, it is the lack which becomes magnified and poignant.  When fluff rules, suspicions abound.

One wonders whether present-day applications of therapy and psychoanalysis have become dominated by those who simply could not comprehend the rigors of Jung or Freud, and that the tertiary influences of second-rate thinkers are what is currently guiding the incompetencies masked as expertise and profundity.  But fluff can only survive for too long before it is revealed as lacking in substance.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from medical conditions such that the medical conditions prevent the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, an effective Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS must include a substantive legal argument which lays out the meat of the matter.

Fluff will not work; fluff will not rule.  Law is a serious business, and the argumentation of “the law” must be what rules in order to meet the criteria in a Federal Disability Retirement case.

Contact a FERS Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and begin the process of preparing, formulating and filing an effective and substantive Federal Disability Retirement application with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management under FERS, where fluff rarely passes by and where the hard legal facts of the case must be king.

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: This is Happiness

It is the title of Niall Williams’ recent novel; a story about a young man’s coming of age; and yet, beyond a story about a small town and the movement of progress, electrification and the defining moments of what constitutes “happiness” in the small sense of the word, human trials and miseries, as every story must include both happiness as well as sadness, and no story can be believed without the inclusion of either.

It is, ultimately, not in the accumulation of wealth or fame (for, in the small town where the story is set, neither can even be conceived as to the extreme nature that modernity has embraced), but in friendship and human interaction, of love and admiration.  It is set in a time before electricity was known; when innocent love was from afar; and where death was accepted as part of a natural process.

The undersigned rarely recommends a novel to others, but Niall Williams’ work, “This is Happiness”, is well worth a slow and enjoyable read.  It is like an Irish Ballad written in prose, and you can almost hear the melody within the pages of the novel.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that 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, what “happiness” is comprised of is often — like Niall Williams’ novel — in the smaller things of life: Of acceptance; of being treated with dignity in the workplace; of being able to obtain an annuity because of one’s medical condition when the need arises and the circumstances warrant.

Consult with an OPM Disability Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and begin the process of early retirement so that you can focus upon the smaller things in life, and declare that yes, This is Happiness.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire
OPM Disability Retirement Attorney

 

OPM Retirement for Mental or Physical Incapacity: Gatherings

What is it about human beings that compel and necessitate it?  Unlike the wandering Cheetah or the lone wolf, human gatherings have been the imprint of psycho-social requirements since the dawn of day.  The tribal gatherings around the campfire; the Thanksgiving feast that celebrates survival and the new season; the corporate board, the large-scale concerts and the network of social media; and then, of course, that which is all but forgotten, and yet always yearned for: the private gathering of “just the family”.

Somehow, we lie to ourselves and soothe our own egos, suppress the truth by – again, “gathering” – the number of “friends”, “likes”, etc., and it has now become a quantitative game as opposed to a qualitative reality that determines how “happy” one is.  In modernity, we have lost the whole purpose and underlying foundation for what gatherings are meant to be – of the interchange between neighbor and neighbor, the opportunity to listen to elders and the basis for which a society survives.

For the Federal employee and U.S. Postal worker who suffers from an injury or disability, such that the medical condition begins to prevent the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal position, does the Agency, the immediate supervisor or fellow coworkers even “know” about the injury or disability, or even show any concern or care?

Each day, we “gather” together for a common purpose – for work, for the Agency’s “mission” and the “work-for-paycheck” agreement between employer and employee.  And, yes, there is a distinction to be made between a “social gathering” and a gathering intended for purposes of work and productivity.

Yet, there is something inherently amiss when one’s humanity is lost in the process of this thing called “employment gathering” – where no one seems to care about the next person, and when once the clock ticks to the closing hour, everyone departs to their own private gatherings, whatever that may be and wherever it may end up.  Of course, to invite a coworker to a home meal may constitute some form of harassment, and any gatherings to “pray” for another – regardless of what religion or denomination of belief it may originate from – is automatically excluded because of the offensive connotations of such an act; and so we are left with going home, each of us, and gather from a distance through the technology of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and email.

And yet, the Federal or Postal employee who has all along suffered from a medical condition, suffers still, and the only option left is to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application through the bureaucratic Office of Personnel Management, just because the “gathering” at work didn’t care enough to try and find a suitable accommodation for that Federal or Postal employee.  Go figure.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Disability Retirement for Federal Government Employees: Servitude

It is a term that is viewed as neutral in one sense; for, the concept itself, while implying subjection to an owner or master, does not require it.  “Slavery”, on the other hand, necessarily connotes a system of ownership and involuntary compulsion; “servitude” can quite simply be tied to the idea that there exists a lack of freedom.

Taking it a step further, one can experience servitude if one has complete freedom; for, the excess of X often results in the opposite of X, as in the statement, “If everything is nothingness, then nothing is everything.”  Thus do we believe that, in modernity, everyone has greater liberty and freedom.  Fewer and fewer issues are any longer societal taboos – from what entertainment we prefer to any constraints on the choice of a career, Western society claims to have the greatest extent of freedom.

Yet, why is it that people don’t “feel” free?

That economic limitations and restrictions seem oppressive; that no one has time to gather together as families; that the more technology accords and claims to give us greater freedom to do “other things”, the less time we feel we have to do anything but work and rush about in this world where the intrusiveness of technology has had its opposite effect – not of granting greater freedom, but of voluntarily goading us into a servitude of acceptance.

Medical conditions, too, have a way of creating that bondage of servitude.  Somehow, when a medical condition begins to develop, it ties us down, requires us to change the way we have been living, and forces us to think again about the priorities in our lives.  For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have “served” their Federal and Postal “masters” well, the rise of a medical condition often magnifies how much we are a “slave” to time, to productivity and to the pursuance of goals that somehow, in light of the medical condition, become less and less of importance.

Filing a Federal Disability Retirement application is often a necessity required by and resulting from a medical condition that makes the Federal or Postal employee realize that he or she can no longer perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job.

All the while, the anomaly of life intrudes: One had believed that one had chosen freely one’s Federal or Postal job, but when the medical condition began to impede, and the demands of the Federal Agency or the Postal Facility made it clear that it had become a job of servitude, it may be time to cut those chains of bondage and free one’s self to attend to the greater arena of liberty – one’s health, by preparing, formulating and filing a Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: Working to preclude

Aren’t most of us perennially, incessantly, constantly and by chronic despair in that “emergency mode” of operating through life?

We are working to preclude: Some imagined disaster; some trouble just around the corner; some depth of a hole we cannot dig ourselves out of; and some problem that we are thinking about that is developing that we are not yet aware of.  Few of us actually work with a positive attitude to build; fewer still with a confidence that tomorrow will bring some answers; and rarely, of that person who does not work to preclude.  Caution is the mainstay of a troubled past that left a child anxious, uncertain, self-conscious and entirely lacking of self-confidence.

That is why that wide arc of “self-esteem” training that began to spread about in the classrooms and throughout communities took hold – in the false belief if we just kept saying to a child, “You are worthy” or poured accolades and trophies just for showing up, that somehow we would counteract the deep imprints left upon the cuts and scars that were perpetrated by homes of divorce, emotional devastation and incompetent parents.

Working to preclude is often a form of sickness; it is the constant scrambling to try and play prevent defense, and how often have we seen an NFL game where the team that scores first and many times ends up losing because they spent the rest of the game working to preclude?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are suffering 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 constant effort in working to preclude the Federal Agency from putting you on a Performance Improvement Plan (acronym “PIP”), issuing a letter of warning, or proposing a removal based upon excessive absenteeism, being on LWOP for too long, or for poor performance, leaves a hollow feeling of an uphill battle that can never ultimately be won.

Filing a Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted ultimately to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is a step away from working to preclude – it is, instead, a positive first step towards securing a future that is otherwise as uncertain as one’s efforts in working to preclude.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement for Federal & Postal Employees: Staring into nowhere

Except in the slumber of darkness, it is an impossibility of a feat unperformed; yet, the metaphor itself works well, because we all engage in those periods of vacant stares where someone suddenly nudges you back into reality and comments, “It was as if you were lost in thought.”  What does that really mean?

The fact that we can stare, perceive through organically mechanistic means of refractive light upon the cornea of our eyes and yet fail to be “conscious” about the bodily functioning of organs designed to perceive, evaluate, analyze and judge so that other predators may not surprise us for their mealtime delights, is indeed a mystery that evolution cannot fully account for.  Staring into nowhere is the physical capacity to be awake, fully conscious and have perfect vision and eyesight, and yet “see” nothing beyond the point of one’s protruding nose.

In an analogy or even a metaphorical sense, it is the loss of hope because of an inability to see a future bright and with excitable anticipation.  Remember those youthful days when the future yet remained as a potentiality unfulfilled and unable to be fully foreordained because of the unfettered plenitude of energy unbounded to be released forevermore?  We could barely contain the excitement to “get out there” and “show the world” what we are made of, the unleashing of one’s creative energy ready to “wow” the universe that had never seen the likes of such talent and reserve of energetic innocence.

And then something happened.  Life intervened; love paused; a leave of senses occurred.  Or, more likely, we encountered others who had the same hopes and dreams, and recognized that others had already trampled upon the unspoiled grounds of sacrosanct altars, and there was little left for us.  Then, with wisdom and experience somewhat under that proverbial belt, we moved on and adopted some more “realistic” goals, and were perhaps all the more happier for it.

Then again, perhaps a medical condition intervened, and a further and “real” reality set in – one that continued to debilitated and progressively destroy.  Medical conditions can do that to a person, and an agency’s insistence upon antagonizing and creating a hostile work environment somehow adds to the turmoil.

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 often the only way to ultimately escape that vacant staring into nowhere, precisely because it allows for a vantage point of future security to be recognized.

Staring into nowhere, while escaping into the impractical world of daydreams, may allow for relief for a moment, but the more effective perspective is to look at one’s circumstances, assess the Federal agency or Postal Service’s capacity to denigrate and destroy, and begin taking those steps in preparing for one’s future by considering filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement for Federal Employees: Poetry’s death

By the title is not meant the terminus of the literary genre; that would be too great a claim to consider.  No; instead, it is the more subtle manner of thought, the perspective of viewing, and the approach to living.  We live by metaphors and analogies; that is what the rise of language has accomplished, where the raw violence of predatory insights in nature’s setting of surviving could no longer tolerate, but where some amount of leisure, such little calculation of foresight, and a crumb of thoughtful reserve allowed for a world of mythological beauty.

Materialism killed the purring cat.  For a time, Charles L. Dodgson – whom we all know by the pen name, “Lewis Carroll” – attempted to stem the tide of decay, and succeeded for a generation or so.

Once upon a time, parables could be understood; elven creatures and angels with wings releasing residues of golden dust, tinged with faith and tinctures of mysterious delights would pass by windows left ajar for welcoming strangers; and sleeping beauties, knights in shining armor riding upon white horses to rescue were but assumed and accepted, and not the rattling ugliness of windmills mistaken for dragons no longer existing.  We believed.

But then came science, logic and the Darwinian distance of antiseptic explanations, and we all embraced it because of its allure of pragmatic promises.  But has it brought us any greater joy or insight into life’s misgivings?

Shakespeare referred always to the alignment of the stars, and of gargoyles behind the fool’s mask; and while the inquisition of religion’s past haunts still in the corridors of forgotten subterranean memories, it is the loss of inquisitiveness which makes for greater sorrow.

Words and explanatory concepts must abide by the correspondence they convey to the greater world about; and whether the world is deemed flat, or the earth is no longer a geocentric universe but a reversal to an upside-down world constituting a heliocentric perspective, unless the believer is a seafarer or an astrophysicist attempting to calculate the incalculable in geometric complexities beyond our present concerns, what difference does it make – except that we no longer embrace the wonderland lost to the science of inchoate values.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, where the present pain and anguish suffered is something experienced in “real time” and impacted in actual terms, it is often poetry’s death which compels one to prepare, formulate and file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

Think about it:  it is work in order to play; play is the time of leisure in order to engage in the poetry of life.  But when a medical condition forces one into a life of drudgery, where the “play” part of life is merely more work in order to get enough rest or sleep to continue in the “work” portion of living, then life as a whole becomes unbearable, and no amount of poetry can soothe the pains of this life.

That is why preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Employee Disability Retirement application – in order to circumvent the agony of one’s medical condition – becomes important in order to reach that plateau where one can attend to the medical conditions themselves, and further, to forestall the inevitability of poetry’s death.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement Benefits: The incoherent narrative

The squirrel jumped into the rabbit hole.  Then, the floods came, and Noah didn’t like the color of his shoes because they matched the starboard and not the bow, and when the rudderless drift occurred, then did the turtle finally come out from the squirrel’s nest, high atop the water’s edge. The medical conditions caused a lot of stress, and if it wasn’t for the Supervisor who constantly harasses me, I wouldn’t have filed a complaint against him, but the doctors never said I couldn’t work except when the heart attack occurred and Bessie my dog ran across the street and got hit by a car.

It is, ultimately, more than just a sequence of lettering; greater than the combination of consonants and vowels in logical arrangement; indeed, the language of the narrative must form a coherent whole.  Can a jumble of words provide the requisite narrative in order to meet the legal criteria in filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management?

Must the “Statement of Disability” as reflected on Standard Form 3112A provide a sequence of information such that it:  identifies the medical conditions suffered; informs the OPM administrative specialist of the nexus between the medical condition and the positional duties of one’s officially-slotted job; and meets and addresses, whether explicitly or implicitly, the burden of proof in showing by a preponderance of the evidence that the Federal or Postal employee is eligible and entitled to Federal Disability Retirement benefits?

To all three questions, the answer is in the affirmative.  For, preparing and formulating a Federal Disability Retirement application, submitted through one’s agency (if the Federal or Postal employee is still employed with the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service or, if separated from service, not more than 31 days since the date of separation) and then to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is not merely stringing together a series of words, phrases, concepts and factual truisms; and it is often the incoherent narrative which not only fails to meet the legal burden of proof in a Federal Disability Retirement claim, but further, is harmed by providing too much information, whether intentionally or not.

The predetermined defeat of a Federal Disability Retirement application is not necessarily denied because of the substantive incoherence of one’s statement of disability; rather, more often than not, it is the unintended divulgence of information neither necessary nor true, which often provides the fodder for the fox to further the stealth of his slyness.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: Evaluative Adaptability

Life is often like a boat without oars, let alone a motor which functions; and as the waves rock the water transport, one maintains balance, sanity and survival by attempting to prepare for the whitecaps and hoping for a further delay of a storm, and never a tsunami.  But those changes inevitably come, and attack in onslaughts of exponential fury.  One attempts to adapt, to remain like the chameleon who must survive by an unwanted metamorphosis, in order to maintain the delicate balance of nature as described by the brutality of Darwin’s world.

Man presumably has the advantage of possessing the dual modalities of penultimate capacity for survival:  the cognitive and the physical.  Of the latter, the human animal is neither a lion nor a cheetah; and of the former, self-doubt, confusion and intellectual arrogance often muddles the clarity of purpose shown by other carnivores.  But it is the combination of both — of the evaluative adaptability acquired through intake and filtering of information, analysis of factual and predictable processing, and shifting positions based upon real-time data reflected upon through a compendium of intellectual acuity honed and perfected by experience.

That is precisely why bureaucracies are often potholes of frustration; as systematized repetition dulls the soul, so the imposition of irrational decisions heightens the angst of man’s inner being.  For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suddenly find that a medical condition may cut short one’s career with the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service, it is with that duality of advantageous survival mode that one must approach both the Federal agency (and the U.S. Postal Service), as well as the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Certainly, physical endurance is limited often by the medical condition and the deterioration of stamina and energy; but the evaluative adaptability and the capacity to change course should never be underestimated.

Medical conditions need not deter the direction of the boat; most medical conditions are mere whitecaps which rock like irritants on a summer evening where gnats and mosquitoes ravage the unprotected surface; but unlike hurricanes and tsunamis which overwhelm and destroy, the fact that one’s steering mechanism or the ability to propel oneself forward may be damaged, should never extinguish the Federal or Postal employee from recognizing that one’s evaluative adaptability is the key towards moving positively into the future and affirmatively taking steps to secure a brighter tomorrow, by beginning the process of preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through OPM.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire