FERS Disability Retirement for Federal Government Employees: Lost

Is it a feeling; an emotion; a state of being; or merely a fact?  Or, can it be “all of the above”?  Can one say, for example, “I feel lost” — but yet be in one’s home or in other familiar surroundings?  Is it an emotion — like sadness or joy, but instead having the emotion of “lostness”?

It can certainly be a state of being; and there is no question that the statement, “I am lost”, can be a factual assertion where one is wandering through an unfamiliar city and you stop and say to a bystander, “Excuse, but I am new to this city and I am lost.  Can you help me?”

The latter of these examples, of course, is the more uninteresting; the first or second in this series, a conundrum that makes one pause.  When we experience the feeling or emotion, however, it is far from anything obscure or nebulous; we actually can, and do, experience a sensation of “being lost” — just not in a geographical or “factual” manner.

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, it is natural to feel “lost” when confronted with the prospect of preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application with OPM (the acronym standing for The U.S. Office of Personnel Management).

Consult with a Federal Disability Retirement Attorney, who can guide you through the maze of confusion, whether “being lost” is an emotion, a feeling, a state of being — or merely a fact.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Information: The unknown

What is it about “the unknown” that terrifies us?  Is it merely from the stories of childhood that kept us up late into the night with limbs and face under the heavy blankets, hoping that those goblins wouldn’t suddenly pounce upon the flesh that remained uncovered, with sweat and suffocation preferable to the gnawing of a hungry predator?

Or from insecurities that remained despite the best efforts from parents who were clueless but wanted a dissimilar approach from their own childhoods; yet, despite those efforts to “never be like my mom and dad”, such exertions were merely untested applications from tentative and unlearned methodologies, leaving the insecurities manifesting through thoughtless hesitations because no one knows what they are doing?

The unknown is always, by definition, an uncertainty, and thus a conundrum that instills fear, prefatory pause and trembling of confidence.

When a medical condition enters into the picture as a factor to contend with, the unknown becomes a depth of fear and loathing, precisely because there can never be concretized stability within a wrapping of the unknown.  Suddenly, with the medical condition present, the unknown becomes an uncertainty; the uncertainty compels anxiety and an angst that cannot be controlled.

People enjoy watching horror shows and movies depicting the supernatural; of monsters and goblins that suddenly pop up from nowhere and frighten; because, once removed as a spectator who can fear and yet know simultaneously that you are merely an observer of the horror and mayhem, the fear of the unknown is recognized in the third person, and therefore separable enough from the reality of the virtual.

When one suffers from a medical condition, however, the observer and the sufferer become one and the same, inseparable, unable to merely act as a dispassionate spectator.

For Federal and 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, the unknown is the uncertainty of a future undetermined.

Thus, what needs to be focused upon is what is known, and let the unknown unravel — by preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, so that the Federal or Postal worker suffering from a medical condition can focus upon the known quantities of life: One’s health, one’s happiness, and the present circumstances that cannot continue perpetually into the future.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill
Federal Disability Lawyer

 

Disability Retirement under FERS & CSRS: Ordered lives

There is, first of all, chaos and disarray; and whether from a biblical worldview or the natural paradigm of a universe formed from a massive energy source that exploded with such force as to hurl a spinning residue of astronomical proportions into far galaxies that resulted in the starry heavens we witness today; it is from the opposite of a placid tranquility that we experience the ordered lives of everyday existence.

There are, of course, the extremes of the spectrum – of that person who is obsessive and compulsive about the “ordering” of one’s life, where every teacup and saucer must be placed in the cupboard within precise millimeters of one another, and no angle of a picture on a wall must be allowed to circumvent the geometric consistency with the right angles of the corners; or, by contrast, the slob who believes that pants, plants, underwear and empty pizza boxes belong in the same corner of the bedroom as expensive china and puppies who snuggle in bathroom showers.

Somewhere in between the two extremes upon the spectrum of life, exists the ordinary person of ordinary means, who wakes up each ordinary morning to go about in ordinary ways; all within the constraints of ordered lives.  All, or most of us, like, enjoy and look forward to some semblance of order in our lives.

Chaos is good for an exciting moment; monotony of discourse for the rest of the day requires that sanity mandates a certain sequence of events, and that is why dystopian stories of a universe in disarray after a nuclear war or some other disastrous consequence of political missteps left in the hands of incompetent world leaders allows for small-budget films to be successful in scaring the hell out of us all.

Divorce, death, illness and tragedies disrupt the otherwise sought-after ordering of lives left peaceful; medical conditions tend to do that, don’t they?  They interrupt the tranquility that we so seek with quiet resolve; and then the medical condition becomes a chronic state of existence, and more than just a nuisance, they interrupt our plans, our hopes, and the essence of our ordered lives.

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 the Federal or Postal employee’s ability and capacity to perform the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the interruption that ensues from the disruption of a medical condition, resulting in the breaking up of one’s ordered life, often comes to a point where consideration must be given to filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.

It is an employment benefit that is “there” for Federal and Postal employees who can no longer perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties.  And, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the time to consider preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits may come at a time when the previous state of ordered lives is sought after again, if only to reach a destination where chaos is no longer the new norm of everyday existence.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement from Federal Government Employment: Wars forgotten

We tend to believe that the wars we fight today will forever remain in the memories of future generations; and so we carry about us, in the universe of our own minds, an imprint of selective relevance, while all the time passing by buried encounters of past generations left in remains of this earth’s bosom.

How many pastures of hallowed grounds do we step upon each day, where centuries ago the Native American fought against a rival tribe?  Or in Europe, where fiefdoms were protectorates and knights battled with sabers drawn and armies vanquished?  But for ivory-tower historians who dig through the minutiae of battles in times forgotten, what wars are remembered excepting in the minds of loved ones left behind and old men and women shuttered in corners of traumatic memories once relevant, but now shelved as dusty remains in an uncaring universe?

Who remembers the Spanish Civil War (except, perhaps, the dying countrymen themselves) but through literary genres by Hemingway’s reportage, his classic novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and of Malraux’s participation and subsequent writings – all overshadowed by portending events just northeast in the dark cauldrons of Germany’s bestiality and the world marching towards a greater war?  And what of private wars – those within one’s own mind, or between neighbors, within marriages and among family members; do we too loosely bandy about such terms, or is it appropriate based upon the level of ferocity and the tactics used?

Perhaps you are sitting around with a group of friends or colleagues, and discussing irrelevant but fun topics of dystopian pastimes, as in, “What if Germany had won the war; what would this world be like today?” (Some would immediately contend, of course, that both Germany and Japan did indeed win their respective wars, ultimately – through economic dominance and rise of subsequent influence; and thus, to engage in hypotheticals is a meaningless exercise of embracing a virtual reality which has its parallel universe in reality, anyway).  But in the course of the conversation, an individual sitting morosely in the corner suddenly blurts out, “I was in the war of ___, and that is how I lost my leg – see!”

Would silence ensue, because the rules of the “fun” game were merely to engage in make-believe, and here was evidence of a warrior from a real war?  Or, given the same set of circumstances, one of the participants suddenly admits:  “I am fighting a war with my family.”  Would we take him seriously, or just ignore with aplomb and impassive expressions a deviation from the world of our own fantasies?

Wars forgotten – whether of unnamed tombstones or hallowed grounds overgrown with weeds and concrete buildings; or of private hells within the confines of one’s own mind; they are all “real” to the extent we remember, and vanish upon the last person who recalls.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must fight against the ongoing “wars” within agencies, and are forced to battle their own private hells because of medical conditions that impact the ability and capacity to perform the essential elements of one’s positional duties, the strategic move in preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS of CSRS Offset, may be the best way to move beyond the trench-warfare that one must engage in daily.

For, in the end, the wars forgotten are all advanced beyond by some movement forward – and for Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must get beyond the rut of this career, filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application is that final echo of a marching step advancing, in the constant and all-encompassing battles in those wars forgotten.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire