Federal Medical Retirement Law: The Dogmatist

It is easy to fall into being one; and, one need not be overtly (or overly) religious in order to be considered as such.  Ultimately, it is not the opinion held or the inability to see different perspectives or “angles” on a matter; rather, it is the attitude which defines the dogmatist — the arrogance; the refusal to consider other viewpoints; the intransigence of thought.

Now, that is not to say that being “dogmatic” is always a negative thing; for, there are instances in life where “sticking to one’s principles” is a good and necessary thing.  Sometimes, when the winds of change and the malleability of ethical or moral convictions seem to reactively alter as quickly as the weather, it is of some comfort to find a dogmatist in our midst.  But context and content combined, always matter; and it is the “when” as much as the “what” which determines whether being a dogmatist is justified.

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 duties, being a dogmatist may be a detriment.  Never think that your own case is a “slam dunk”; for, to be unequivocally adamant about the strength of your disability case is often because the one who suffers from a disabling medical condition cannot think otherwise — in other words, like a dogmatist would think.

Consider, instead, contacting a Federal Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law in order to get a more balanced view of your case, and leave your dogmatic views on more pressing moral or ethical issues which may necessitate the strength of your convictions in order to retain the antiquity of intransigent thoughts.

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 Legal Assistance: The Letdown After

It is a positive thing to have goals; to set aside things, days, events, etc. to look forward to; to change up the monotony of daily living exercises and take a day off, go to visit a friend; but then the event, day, set-aside, etc., passes, and there is the letdown after.

Perhaps it is natural, or not; maybe it is to be expected.  In either case, whether natural or meta-natural, the severity of the emotional letdown often reflects the gap between expectation and reality.  For, isn’t that one of the foundational “keys” to happiness or discontent?

If our expectations are X and the reality which we encounter is also X, we are “happy”.  If, on the other hand, our expectations are X but the reality we experience is Y, then the “gap” between our expectations and the reality we must face will result in an emotion of discontent.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who look forward to the Holidays, the weekend, the next respite — the letdown after is palpable.  Why?  Because any future stopgap measures fail to attend to the foundational problems which create the gap between expectations and reality — one’s medical condition.

Consider filing for and applying for Federal Disability Retirement, a benefit which is there to solve the problem of an incompatibility between your medical conditions and the positional duties you must perform in your Federal or Postal job.  It is, in the end, the only solution for the letdown after.

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: Walking in Place

That is how lives often feel, isn’t it?  Moving, but not going anywhere; full of activity, but accomplishing nothing; busy, yet failing to achieve any goals; engaged, yet not completing any tasks, etc.  It is the dread of walking in place, of witnessing advancement in multiple other quarters but not in your own corner; of moving, but not in any particular direction.

Medical conditions tend to do that to one’s life; of freezing a person in place, of seemingly endless activity, yet not getting anywhere.  One step forward, two steps back; and as each day is comprised by further setbacks, the failure to meet one’s goals in life becomes a practice in daily frustrations.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have a sense that they are merely “walking in place” because of a medical condition that prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, consider preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application in order to move beyond one’s Federal or Postal career.

Consult with an OPM Disability Attorney who specializes in FERS Disability Retirement Law, and stop walking in place and begin the process of moving forward.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire
FERS Disability Retirement Attorney

 

OPM Medical Disability for Federal and Postal Employees: Comparisons

Does it help to make them?  Do we take comfort in judging the relative plusses and minuses in making comparisons — as in, X has A, B and C, but I have, in addition, D and E, and therefore I am more fortunate that X is.  Or, is it a comparison of one’s conditions, as in: “Boy, at least I don’t have X like Lisa does”, or “At least I am not in Y’s situation”?

To the extent that comparisons remind us of that which we are blessed with, they allow for a certain level of utilitarian value.  But there is a negative side to it: Of jealousy engendered by comparison, or of discontent resulting from making one.  Rousseau, of course, makes that point throughout his “Social Contract” analysis, of the purity of man’s intentions in that fictional state of “nature” that we were once in, but where society’s accretions of materialism created the artificial emotional response of discontent and jealousy.  But compared to what?

It is important to make the fair and correlative comparisons which are relevant — as in “apples to apples” and not “apples to oranges”.  For, it is the uniqueness of each entity, object or situation to be compared with the singularity of another that makes for a proper comparison.

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 inadvisable to compare one’s case to somebody else’s.  For, the proper comparison is not to evaluate one’s medical condition and the severity of one’s medical condition to that of another person’s medical condition; rather, the proper comparison in a Federal Disability Retirement case is to compare one’s medical condition to the essential elements of one’s position.

Thus, comparisons made must always take into account the relevant connections which relate not just in terms of similarities, but as is the case in Federal Disability Retirement Law — in what the law allows for and considers significant.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: 2 countervailing rules

Here are 2: If you have an idea late at night, unless you write it down, you will never remember what it was in the morning.  The other half of the countervailing rule?  In the morning, it won’t seem as profound a thought as it first appeared late the previous night.  Or: Forgiveness can come easily when once you admit to your fault; and the counter to that — if it is your spouse or close relation, don’t think that you won’t be reminded of your need for forgiveness when once the first sign of trouble appears.  And another: Time will heal; yet, the countervailing reality: others rarely care to sacrifice their time in order to allow for the time needed to heal.

And for Federal and Postal employees 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 first “rule” of the 2-part countervailing rules of life is often: “Oh, I have been such a good employee all of these years, I am sure that my Agency or the Postal Facility will be understanding while I prepare a Federal Disability Retirement application — for, doesn’t all of those years of good service count towards a good-will well deserved?” And the countervailing rule to that is: “Buddy, you’re no longer going to be a part of this team, and what you did yesterday counts only until this morning, and no more. Let us give you a freshly-minted medallion that you can pin on your lapel, and boot you out the door the moment we discover that you are planning to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits — even though you are doing only that which you have a perfectly reasonable right to”.

And thus do the countervailing rules always come in a duality of balancing coordinates; and, unfortunately, the behemoth of a Federal Agency or the U.S. Postal Service always seems to have the upper, dominant hand, which is why you may want to first consult with an attorney who specializes in dealing with such countervailing rules of life.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Information: Overload

This is a perilous time we live in.  Some would counter that it all depends upon one’s outlook and perspective; that for those who have an adventuresome spirit, a sense of excitement for the future, and a fearless attitude in facing challenges, such times as these are for the bold and independent-minded.

Youth, of course, has its advantages; having nothing to lose, they race blindly ahead without concerns for the consequences left behind.  Nostalgia for a time gone can be infectious and wasteful; there are too many things happening in modernity to allow for reminiscences to crowd in.

This is an Age of Overload.  We read about and watch popular series about a time past, of horses and buggies, of simplicity in living, and wonder how in the world did we become what we are today?  Is it all a grand illusion?  Were there as many problems, worries, concerns and angst-ridden days as these days?  Was life ever really simple where children danced daily through fields of wildflowers during summer months of lazy and carefree memories, like wistful shadows wilting on a rainy day where no one spoke in fearful whispers beyond the day’s journey of time?  Or was it always like it is today — of overload and constant flux, of working beyond hours assigned and never seeming to meet the day’s obligations or responsibilities?

Then, of course, those beset with a medical condition have an exponential effect beyond the human capacity to endure.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, where the medical condition begins to prevent the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s position, the overload that occurs because of the impediment of the medical condition itself can be overwhelming and irreconcilable.

Federal Disability Retirement may not be the most optimal solution in all circumstances, but it is often the only choice remaining.  Either that, or the Federal or Postal worker who can no longer perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal position will have to simply endure, and often face the consequences of workplace harassment, increasing pressures and continuing deterioration of one’s medical conditions because of the added stresses.

In the end, it is this overload of stresses that defeats and destroys, and 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, is the only way to avoid the inevitable results of a society burdened with overload.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Lawyer Representation OPM Disability Retirement: Arbitrariness of life

What defines arbitrariness?  Is it when there is a lack of pattern, or does our own input of misunderstanding or lack of comprehension determine the defined formlessness of the world around us?  Is Kant right in his implications – that the “noumenal” world that is outside of our sphere of cognitive input remains unknowable, arbitrary, unfathomable and unreachable, and it is only by the categories of internal psychological structures that we naturally impose upon the world, make sense of it, and “order” it so that we are thus able to comprehend it, that such an understanding between the bifurcated universes of the phenomenal world we comprehend and the noumenal world we can never grasp defines the penultimate concept of that which is arbitrary?

And what of the “arbitrary life” – is it merely that which we do not understand, or is there more to it than that?

Most people live lives that establish a consistent “pattern” of progression.  Thus do old sayings go: “A person is a communist in the morning, a radical in the early afternoon, but if he is not a conservative by nightfall, he has never grown up.”  Or even of the implicit response of the Sphinx: “a man who is four-legged, then two, then three” – implies a systematic progression, then degeneration of sorts; in other words, a pattern of life-cycles.

And we expect a blue-print of what it means to live a “successful” life – of education, work, family and career, where there is a consistent increase in wealth, wisdom and weariness of strangers that continues to expand and grow.  But what if there is an interruption to that “pattern” or “blue-print” that everyone expects?  What if misfortune befalls, bankruptcy is added or divorce, death or even a hurricane and flooding descends upon one’s life – does the unfortunate event suddenly make one’s life an arbitrary one? Or, what about the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker who must suddenly face a medical condition, such that the medical condition no longer allows for the Federal or Postal employee to perform all of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal job – does that make the interruption of life’s constancy suddenly into an ‘arbitrary’ life?

The definition of that which makes X arbitrary is always related to the “randomness” of events; but for human beings, it is indeed the perspective one has and the calm within a storm that influences whether the objective basis of that which is arbitrary is influenced by the subjective approach of a person’s life.

For the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker who must consider filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the initial steps in preparing a Federal Disability Retirement application may determine, objectively, the future course of the Federal Disability Retirement application itself, as to whether it was “arbitrarily” compiled or systematically composed.

Like the orchestra that has an off-tune instrument, the symphony created will determine whether one’s Federal Disability Retirement application is a crescendo of progression, or merely a disturbing sound of failure.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: The din of silence

They are opposites, and yet they can confer meaning and communicate conceptual clarity by the very usage of simultaneous reflection in conjoined placement within a singular sentence of repose.  Can silence be of such tumultuous unnerving, and a confusion of loud noises be characterized within the context of its opposite, and still retain a clear sense of meaning?  Would it make the similar, mirror-image sense if we transposed and flipped those same words, and instead spoke about the “silence of din”?

That makes it sound like a movie title, or a short story encompassing a mysterious foreign land where Zen monks chant within the quiet gaze of an assassin’s eye.  But there are times when silence becomes so overwhelming in its quietude, that truths become revealed and concealed perspectives are suddenly manifested, and it is during those moments of enlightening revelations that realizations of necessity come to the fore (or, perhaps, it merely means that our stomachs are rumbling and we are merely hungry).

To paraphrase Bertrand Russell, the ever-mischievous agnostic, who once quipped that when a person thinks that questions of eternal salvation, the need for a higher being and questions of profundity encapsulating transcendent issues and metaphysical concerns begin to invade and come to the fore, it is probably nothing more than indigestion and a good pharmacological prescription pill should take care of it.  But it really does not work the other way, or make any sense, does it?

There is no “silence of din” – the latter is just that, a tumultuous cacophony of deafening onslaught, and that describes most of living in modernity, where the search for a slice of silence within that din is like a breath of eternal sighs in exasperated tones of forgiving acrimony.

But there is a “din of silence” – that moment when we can stand in the unprovoked thoughts of our own reflections, when we can remove ourselves for a slice of contractions where pain cannot reach and confusion will not confound, and it is in the monastic paradigm of clashes where worth and value coalesce, when thought and action extend, and how the true essence of a person becomes revealed in a moment of naked reality.  But then, the real world comes crashing back, and we awaken from the slumber of transcendence.

There is, often in the momentary timelessness between reality and slumber, a realization of that which needs to be accomplished in order to move forward.  That is the point when the Federal or Postal employee, who experiences the pain of a medical condition, must decide as to whether to continue in the same modality as the “rest of the world” in trying to just survive, or to “move on” to another stage of life.

It sometimes takes the din of silence to figure that out; but for the Federal or Postal employee who suffers 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 position, it is never advisable to wait for the din of silence before deciding to file a Federal Disability Retirement application with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset; for, in the end, you may end up in the silence of din before achieving the peaceful repose of the din of silence.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal and Postal Disability Retirement Benefits: Signs

It is the title of a song by a group called, “Five Man Electrical Band”, first released in 1970, then re-released in 1971, and the lyrics intelligently portray a world replete with warnings, admonitions, commands and curtailing threats, demanding of us a conduct of conformity otherwise ignored unless backed by such direct mandates.

Of course, there are the other, more subtle signs that we either ignore or otherwise dismiss because of the quiet manner of reproach initiated.  Those subtle signs as evidenced by facial expressions; of a look unexplainable but surely existent with consequential meaning; or premonitions of rougher surf and winds blowing, animals fleeing to the relative safe havens guided by instinctive alarm; and of the rush of adrenaline raising the tiny prickles upon out neck and backs, in dark corners of unlit areas when sounds so distant precede the visual image of oncoming danger.

Do we pick up on them, or go through life disregarding unless and until the reverberations of such deliberate ignorance shatters the calm and quietude of our joyful resolve to remain blind behind a security of negation?  Those trite statements of permeable permissibility:  “He was a nice, quiet man,” said the neighbor next door after the devastation left by the referent cause; “I never saw it coming,” hoarsely uttered by the hospitalized individual in the midst of destruction and debris-filled lands; “Who would have thought…”  And, indeed, in this universe where thinking is paramount, and observation of subtleties a requirement for survival, it is that which we ignore that can harm and injure.

There are those in life who float through and must be protected by means of oversight and constant care; some drivers on the road (or, perhaps, most of them) have no business carrying a license; it is only because others avoid and careen away that survival without a dent, a bruise or a catastrophic collision carries forth an undisturbed pathway from point A to the destination of choice.  And so we have new signs to consider:  It is now unlawful to text or otherwise use a Smartphone in hand, while others who drive with one hand stuffing a cheeseburger in one’s mouth while drinking a coke with the other, and with that invisible third hand pushing buttons on the panel to change satellite stations – somehow, that is safer because the signs tell us so, or at least implicitly inform as to the priority of current concerns.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are surrounded by signs – both subtle and direct – that it is time to move on, ignoring them will not make the underlying, substantive problems dissipate.  Having a medical condition is the first sign, but one which may have no significant impact; but when that medical condition begins to prevent the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal employee’s positional duties, then such an indicia of life’s intersecting whisper should, at a minimum, be elevated to a “warning”.

And when the signs flashing from the Agency’s perspective – of warnings, threats, harassing actions and administrative sanctions – begin to blare loudly as more than just a passing blur of the speed limit which we all tend to ignore, but instead becomes planted prominently for you and all to see, then it is time to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, so that the signs indicated don’t result in those flashing lights in the review mirror forcing us to stop and be hauled before a magistrate to explain those actions of ignoring such signs which we knew, or should have known, needed to be followed.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Tethered, Tattered & Tortured

The first in the series connotes bonding; the second, the state of being; and the third in the tripartite application of this linguistic artifice, the conclusion to a life lived.

Camus and Sartre represent the despair and loss of innocence – of a melancholy realization in the disillusionment of life’s aggregate experience – born in the early days of existentialism which uttered its first breath of strangulated gasps in the aftermath of the horrors of the First World War, only to be reinforced with experiential encounters of greater dehumanization during the Second World War; then, finding its fullness of maturation, with the discovery of alienation and conduct of thinkers like Heidegger, counteracted by the courage of Bonhoeffer’s refusal to submit; and in that consummate realization of the inhuman, collective carnival of cruelty deliberated as the penultimate culmination of Man’s loss of his soul – once, when the bonding of a community embraced the gathering of warmth and caring, and the insertion of alienation from the ashes of despair; much like the Phoenix rising but unable to spread its wings because of the weight of ruin.

The soul once tethered was now severed from its bonds of innocence. The state of being – of the tattered soul – is much like the Japanese woman who once uttered with accusatory vehemence: “When you landed on the moon, you destroyed imagination, romance and the beauty of the gods smiling upon us.” Such was the state of being – of the tattered soul of modernity. And of that conclusion to Man’s fate? Of the tortured soul who finds no path out of the misery of eternal condemnation?

For the Federal employee and U.S. Postal worker who suffers from a medical condition, such that the medical condition separates one from the tethered bonding with one’s workplace, career and coworkers, it is but an obstacle from the tattered state of being which can only conclude with a tortured end, but for the option of 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 or CSRS Offset.  No, filing for OPM Disability Retirement is not the solution of and for all things misshapen; rather, it is an alternative to the complete loss of tethering, where the tattered remains may preclude the ambivalence of a tortured end.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire