OPM Disability Retirement under FERS: A Tough Life

Life is tough in general — and not much has changed since Thomas Hobbes’ descriptive penning of man’s life as “solitary, nasty, brutish and short”, from his magnum opus, Leviathan.  Of course, he was referring to the need for political change; and, in truth, much has changed, and improvements to the comforts which make up for life’s pleasurable moments, have advanced somewhat.

We no longer have to spend each day scrounging for the day’s meal, and most people have some leisure time to take vacations, go out to a restaurant, a movie, a play; or simply sit at home and read a good novel.  A greater part of our society has gone well beyond a life of subsistence living.  Yet, the view that life is tough, still prevails.  The daily stresses of subsistence living is now replaced with other stresses, and the one constant in everyone’s life is the challenge of a medical condition.

Medical conditions place everything else into proper perspective and context.  Without our health, the tough life becomes even tougher.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition no longer allows the Federal or Postal worker to perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal position, consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, and thereby lessen the toughness of life, where the tough life represents Hobbes’ description of the solitary, nasty, brutish and short version of a Dickensian description of life’s daily challenges.

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: The Missing Details

We often know generally about a person’s life — of this person’s promotion in a career or that person’s recent tragedy; or perhaps we read about someone’s travels or another’s triumphs; but it is often the details that we are never given.

How important are the details?  It all depends.  Whether it is from that antiquated show entitled, “The Rest of the Story” or from the rote telling around the dinner table from Grandpa’s memories, the narrative told often leaves out important details, or fills us with too many irrelevancies as to detract from the main point of the story.

Sometimes, details are deliberately omitted — as in veterans of foreign wars who generalize about the fear and mayhem experienced, but leave out crucial details, whether for fear of reliving them or to spare the listener uninvited descriptions of horrors encountered.  Other times, too many details are given, and like the storyteller who knows not how it will all end, so the fact of bringing up the minutiae of irrelevancies may provoke a yawn of boredom when peppered with ingredients that will not bring out the taste and flavor of the main course for dinner.

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 missing details in one’s narrative may be crucial — or an irrelevant distraction.  The “story teller” of one’s story concerning a medical condition may not be the most “objective” person to tell that needed story, precisely because a sense of objectivity is often lost when the Federal Disability Retirement applicant is both the “patient” as well as the main character in this narrative journey of trying to become a disability retiree under FERS.

Consult with a FERS Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement law, and find out what the missing details are, what details are necessary and where the details fit into the greater picture of life’s misgivings before an audience of bureaucrats at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Lawyer Representation for OPM Disability Retirement: Trapped

Desperation is born of it; escape routes relieve the sense of it; and in the end, it is a belief in the hope that there are alternatives which provides a release from it.  The wild animal that is trapped will do everything to escape, including acts of self-harm if there is no alternative presented.  Whether of higher intelligence or some lesser level, the sense or “feeling” of being trapped leads to a suffocating belief of hopelessness.

Armies allow for it; battles often depend upon it; and the “it” which demands for an unconditional surrender is countermanded if there has been a history of genocidal atrocities committed.  It is the hope for some alternative to the present circumstances of despondency that results in a relief from the sense of being trapped; but options and alternatives often remain obscured by fear, lack of knowledge and the paralyzed state itself of “feeling” trapped.

For humans, it is knowledge which is the greater release from such a state of restrictiveness, and for Federal and Postal employees specifically, who suffer from a medical condition where the medical condition is impacting more than their careers — from growing harassment to an imposition of a “Performance Improvement Plan” to further actions, including a proposed removal, etc. — including the tumultuous upheavals experienced in their personal lives, the sense of feeling trapped is a natural consequence of failing to act.

Animals are known to act in desperation and reactionary ways; humans, it is wrongly thought, engage in a more reflective mode of acting — i.e., in a more deliberative, considered approach.  But the sense of feeling trapped often undermines the rational side of humans, and it is in such a state of desperation that the Federal or Postal employee will submit a poorly-prepared Federal Disability Retirement application, increasing the chances of a First-Stage denial.

Filing a Federal Disability Retirement application with the assistance of an attorney will not necessarily guarantee success at any given stage of the process, but it may raise the chances of such success at each and every stage.  In the end, it is knowledge of the options available which allows for the release of one from “feeling trapped”, and consultation with an experienced attorney when preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is the best way to release the hope for a more secure future in entering into the traps of OPM.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: The light in someone else’s home

Walking the dog out past dusk, or perhaps standing in the backyard after the sun sets; or, in an apartment complex looking out beyond; a light turns on in someone else’s home; we wonder, who is it, what are they like, and how different are they?  Do others, upon seeing the light switched on in your home, wonder at the owner — the possessor of the finger that flicked the contraption that illuminated the room and altered it from darkness into a visually acute arena of human activity?

Why do we spend so much time pondering about alien lives in other worlds, in faraway universes beyond our very own, when scant little attention is paid to knowing about our next door neighbor?

Some would give a quick scoff at such a thought and quip, “If only you knew my next door neighbor — you wouldn’t want to know!”  And yet, it is always the one that is “just beyond” that attracts our attention — not the person sitting next to you on a train, or the woman with three screaming children on public transportation; rather, it is the unseen stranger who flicked on the light switch afar, whom we cannot see but by shadows that pass behind the blinds that veil; that is the person who sparks an imagination that there are other lives, other ways to live, and who remind us that the light in someone else’s home means that there are other ways of seeing things, living life and having different opinions, goals, dreams and conversations.

The objectivization of other human beings is the basis by which murders are committed, wars are justified and slogans are written; it is only when the warmth of a light that suddenly illuminates the darkness that prevailed begins to permeate one’s consciousness of what it all means, is when human empathy and compassion begins to form.

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 light in someone else’s home is the one left unlit, and that is often why the harassment begins, the coworkers remain uncaring and the agency seems oblivious to your deteriorating health.

It often seems as if the world cares not; that, despite your years of loyalty shown, late-nights expended to complete an important agency project, or staying beyond the hours to finish the sorting, distribution and delivery — now it is supposed to be someone else’s turn to switch on the light and carry forth the mission.

Preparing 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 only option left.  Whatever the conditions, it is no longer the light in someone else’s home that should be of concern, but the darkness left in your own that needs to change, by preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to OPM.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Medical Disability Retirement: Divided order

Most people are able to tolerate life’s bombardment of stresses by dividing them up, placing them into some semblance of order in priority of tackling them, and bifurcating the individual slices from the aggregate of the whole.  For, if you focus too much upon the forest, as opposed to the individual trees that provide markers for finding your way out, your will become overwhelmed and lost.

It is thus tantamount to the idea of a chaotic rationality, or a messy desk that is disorganized for anyone else but for the one who sits and works at the desk; no one can find anything when asked to look upon the messiness, but query the person who “owns” the desk and he can locate the document immediately.

Similarly, the divided order is where the stresses of life, the messes of living and the chaos of all that must be accomplished in the day-to-day discourse of an individual – from family obligations, work, leisure time, spending time with kids, making a living, paying bills, exercising, keeping up with one’s professional education and obligations – must all be “divided” in order to maintain some semblance of order, and the division itself must be done internally, mentally and within the sphere of private thoughts and unspoken actions; and it is out of the chaos of the world around that the order is imposed by the very division placed within the quietude of one’s consciousness.

Then, of course, complications can occur – that proverbial “last straw that broke the camel’s back” can come sauntering in the dead of night and bring about chaos where chaos once was bridled and restrained.

A medical condition can certainly do that.  For, in many ways, a medical condition is itself chaos defined.  It is an attack not only upon the body, but of the mind as well, and undermines a sense of balance, integrity of self, and self-confidence.

That is why preparing 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 becomes an external imposition of an order divided from within.  It allows for a hopeful look into a future, where one may be able to escape from the chaotic darkness of the deepening morass arising from work, the problems of the Federal Agency or the U.S. Postal facility, and the constant struggle with pain, paranoia or uncontrollable anxiety; and replaces it with a retirement that allows for a basic annuity that extends until age 62, at which point it is recalculated into regular retirement.

A divided order is thus one more step that needs to be attained in attending to one’s medical condition, and preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application is often the first next step to reaching that goal.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: The din of distant darkness

There are often foreboding signs which we conveniently ignore.  In retrospect, how often do we hear of the lament of disregard?  “I never thought…”; “I heard the sound, but –“; “There were some indications, but I just assumed…”  Yet, later, we recognize those telltale footprints, and wonder why the creaking floorboards or the muffled murmur did not raise the cautionary instincts repressed by urge of avoidance.  If we were paid a dollar for every instance where…

Like Jim Croce’s remorseful song, if time could be saved in a bottle from every occurrence of wasteful distraction spent trying to figure out things which could otherwise be discerned through careful analysis, the extent of cumulative superciliousness in trying to act offended or incensed by charges of ineptitude might be reasonably contained.  There is so much noise, these days, that a fresh uptick in the volume of an additional din is barely noticeable.  And when then sound of emitted discordance strums a beat in the distance, who but the expectant and anxious parent recognizes the unique cry of a child’s shrill scream of alarm?

And if the sound is merely likened to darkness, where light no longer creeps between the door left ajar, or the seam between the floor and the locked metal gate, then how are we to recognize the silence of strangled light left abandoned in the loneliness of a world uncaring?

The din of distant darkness is precisely that foreboding sense of what may happen, but based upon “something”, as opposed to a baseless muttering of convictions unfounded when we suddenly “lose it” and cannot extricate ourselves from the frenzy of our own lies.  Much of life is about lying – not necessarily to others (although, we do that often enough, as well), but more to ourselves in order to shield our own fragile psyche from the fears we want to avoid.  But even darkness seen in the distant horizon comes creeping towards us, whether we want it to, or not.

How we nestle in the fears of our own making, or struggle against the timeless reverberations of anxieties unstated and never confessed, is the foundation of what makes for successful living, or failed attempts to conceal the cacophony of numbing onslaughts of life.  Yes, the din of distant darkness is yet merely a warning some months, years or decades away; but for Federal and Postal employees who already have a sense of what is coming, and the inevitability of life’s misgivings, the indicators are probably already there:  a medical condition that will not go away; the intersecting impact between the medical condition and the ability to perform the essential elements of the Federal or Postal position; and the question:  How long can I last?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who need to start considering the process of preparing 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, the din of distant darkness should never be avoided; for, in the end, it will come upon you like a thief in the night, stealthily, and without regard, just as your agency and closest coworkers and supervisors will turn the other eye even when the oncoming rush is about to hit you in a sudden fit of uncaring actions.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: The pleasantry of paper’s caress

Will the electronic tablet ever replace paper’s longstanding sovereignty?  The invention, dissemination and widespread availability of paper was a notable mark in human progression — if only for what it allowed in establishing communication, transfusion of knowledge and conveyance of data.  Like Gutenberg’s movable type printing press, the cotton gin, the Model T Ford and the computer chip of modernity, such inventions became, in retrospect, tumultuous benchmarks of human advancement.  If advertising images reflect a hope of an industry, it is clear that paper’s replacement is a target of that sector.

The image to be replaced — of a carefree summer’s day, lost within the creative imaginings enchanted by a book in hand, is replaced in a meditative surrounding of a monastery of quietude, with a solitary figure with tablet in hand.  Is this a clash of non-conforming imagery, an oxymoron of the tactile senses — or an acceptable intrusion of an outdated perspective now carefully designed to allow for a transcendence beyond sensory inconsistency?

Is it too “weird” to claim that there is a synergy created by the connective tissues, perhaps invisible, in the sensation of bonds reinvigorated when the human organ — the skin which covers one’s hands and fingers — makes contact with the organic product once living in the forest of endless time before becoming transformed and processed into a breathing product of man-made paper?  As opposed to:  holding an electronic device encased in plastic — that dreaded construct of human creation that poisons the environment and resists natural disintegration for eons of man’s extinguished presence on civilization’s watch?

It is precisely that pleasantry of a tactile event — that moment unnoticed when lost in an author’s universe, when the hand feels for the edge of the paper, separates the singular from the aggregation of sequential binding, slides down and in a conjunctive movement of coordinated silence, turns the page.  And from that, idioms of meaningful adages — another page in history turned, entering a new chapter in one’s life, and closing the book on a forgettable chapter in the experiential history of a person; or even of throwing a book at or “booking” someone.  How will that tablet replace such evolutions of linguistic goldmines in the future?

What we unintentionally lose by careless neglect in the rush towards embracing newfangled inventions for monetary gain and lining of pockets in corporate boardrooms, we rarely pause to reflect upon, except in the incremental erasures of history’s richness in human interactions taken for granted but never spoken of.  There is, in rushing towards replacement with thoughtless disregard, a propensity to bury that which is seemingly irrelevant but for the empty chair we suddenly miss, but too late in showing our love and care.  We can regret things that are gone, but remain impotent to despair and unable to replace, once discarded into the ashes, with but a hope for the rise of Phoenix, if only in the timeless mythologies forever extinguished.

For the present, however, paper remains king; and whether by paper or in forms of electronic transmission, Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who need to prepare an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, must formulate a proper strategy and file the proper forms and “paperwork” in order to become eligible for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.  Such a submission must be accomplished within a specified statutory constraint, and the rise of electronic methodologies should not detract from the goal identified:  preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

For, whether by the tactile pleasantry of paper’s caress, or via an electronic transmission, in this particular mode of presentation and submission, it is always the content which matters, and not the means of conveyance.

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

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: The heckler

We see them from afar, as lone voices suddenly erupting with disruptive force, often barely audible, sometimes unintelligible, but rarely unnoticed.  In some corners of the world, their acts can become dangerous; inciting violence, being put upon by the surrounding crowd; their license to interrupt has been somewhat muted by the responsive threat of retaliation, voiced in more recent days.  Most of us sit back and wonder who “those” people are — such fury and passion to deliberately interject without invitation or welcome, and with the full knowledge that the subsequent events will lead to being either escorted out in less than gentle ways, or set upon in more violent fashion.

Are there causes which still exist, worth fighting for, anymore?  Is it just boiled-over frustration against a political firestorm of ineptitude and economic vicissitudes which leaves the ordinary person powerless and voiceless?  Or, is that interruptor a paid badger from another camp, merely acting as an apparently passionate interlocutor, but nothing more in reality than an employed spoiler to reveal the disarray of discontent allegedly felt by the greater populace?

It is a tradition of American politics, certainly, to have the presence of at least one heckler rise from the quietude of the sheep’s fold; and like the wolf covered by the lamb’s clothing, with barely an eye peeping through to gauge the exact timing for the sudden uproar, the impertinence of a question posed, a harassing shout and a barrage of epithets and garbled sentences drowned out by a sea of groans from around; does it all really matter?

There have always been hecklers of time and badgers of dishonor; and like the crowd which follows blindly in sequence of movements, such temporary interruption of a planned event is but merely a nuisance of life tolerated.  How we treat the heckler is but a reflection of life itself. For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have a similar interruption of “the event” of life, such as a medical condition which cuts short the Federal or Postal career, and where a responsive interlude must follow — 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 often the only choice left, and the best alternative to pursue.

Suddenly, it becomes the “quiet one” who must turn and heckle; for the Federal Disability Retirement applicant is often that part of the crowd which never made waves and rarely complained, but merely went about his or her business and accomplished quietly the “mission” of the agency or the daily repetition of work at the Postal Service.  Then, suddenly, the Federal or Postal worker was “singled out” as the “troublemaker” — all because of a medical condition which the Federal or Postal worker never asked for, never wanted, and rarely complained about.  But like the heckler who knows of the oncoming consequences, filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits is surely a cause worth fighting for — despite the rude exit which is certain to follow.

Sincerely, Robert R. McGill, Esquire

OPM Medical Retirement: The attic where useless things are kept

As a metaphor, it refers to the mind, whether because of similar spatial location or by analogy of clutter and vacuity (concepts which are not mutually exclusive, for the former does not imply knowledge, whereas the latter is a negation of it).  The common adage, “Out of sight, out of mind”, applies aptly, as it is the last refuge before it becomes refuse, but somehow is kept because a pause, an indentation, a comma extended the effort of a terminal decision.

Perhaps sentimentality pulled the strings of childhood memories, where the deep recesses of warmth and traipsing through cold streams on summer days and laughter in rolling through careless days of yore attached itself to an item too old to value but not useless enough to discard.

Memories have value, too, you know; they just don’t trumpet the monetary gains in a world devoid of feelings beyond the pocketbook.  The childhood delight of walking up into granddad’s attic, where treasures untold would unfold to the limitless imaginations of a time when entertainment knew not the computer screen nor the smartphone, but carved simplicity of flutes, toy soldiers and great battles where valor and victory filled the silent air.

Houses no longer have stairs to reach the heights of that place of refuge, where sadness would find solace in the quietude amongst dusty suitcases and wedding dresses out-of-fashion but for the beaming bride in photographs fading in crinkled corners of brown discoloration.  Now, we merely have a square entrance cut into the ceiling of the top floor.

Somehow, when stairways were erased from the architect’s mind, the disappearance of the physical means to reach that remaining refuge where loneliness entered and the quiet pitter-patter of mice and old men wandered, the timeless period of pause, peace and calm of perpetuity ceased to exist.  The pencil which erases is more than a negation of thought; it is the end of an era which valued time, relationships and the conversation muted beyond the crackling of a winter’s fire.  The attic where useless things are kept; is that why we treat each other so abominably?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, where the medical condition no longer allows for the great extent of productivity previously enjoyed — suddenly, the Federal agency and the Postal Service treats you like the refuse thrown into the attic, but with no stairway to come back down.  No accommodations are found; you are treated like the pause before the trash bin and the comma before the flush of the toilet.

That is why the option exists for the Federal or U.S. Postal employee to prepare, formulate and file for 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.

For, in the end, while the attic is indeed the place where useless things are often kept, it is up to the Federal or Postal employee to begin constructing the staircase which was erased by the thoughtless architect who knew not the future plans for a greater tomorrow; and that is precisely why, for all of those bygone years, you kept that old wooden toboggan — to slide down that next hill where childhood memories still enliven.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire