Early Retirement for Federal Workers with Disabilities: Progress

Whether as a noun or a verb, the definition remains a mirror-image of one another.  Moreover, it is the implication that always makes one pause — of a juggernaut forward, always advancing, and where societal norms and interpretations forever seem to cast a judgment upon the lack thereof.

In other societies, the status quo or clinging on to traditions, what has “always been”, or even just to maintain a semblance of what was done yesterday, is enough and sufficient for contentment and happiness.  Here, in modernity, “progress” is always about the new, the innovative, and yesterday’s accolades are merely today’s lesser applause.

Progress as a noun indicates a noticeable jump in comparison to today, and a quantum leap by standards of yesterday; and as a verb, it is the action of always advancing, like an army that never sleeps and a navy whose ships never cease amidst the waves of twilight engines churning ever forward.  Are we never allowed to rest for a moment?  Do vacations count, or naps to refresh and recollect our thoughts?

Modern life is always seemingly one of movement with never an allowance for reflection as to whether the direction we are moving towards is the right one, leaving aside whether we even desire to be drawn within the compass of spectrums undecided.

And what about a medical condition — when it develops, arises and begins to impede, do we look upon it merely as a nuisance as opposed to a priority, and is it because it blocks this pathway of the mythology that “progress” must always be maintained?  Do others see it as an impediment, as well, where “slowing down” the team means that you must be sacrificed and cast aside, left behind like so much human detritus no longer of value or worth?

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 and position, it is often this ingrained sense of “progress” (or lack thereof) that begins to insidiously overwhelm.  For, we in the West have a warped sense of time, value, priorities and perspectives when it comes to what constitutes and reflects progress.

Preparing a Federal Disability Retirement can be viewed as a form of “progress”, if only because it allows for a different turn, another option and a perspective taken in another form of what it means to “progress” (emphasis on the last syllable).

Sometimes in life, one’s priorities have to be evaluated and reconstituted; just “moving forward” is not necessarily progress for everyone at all times, and preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application when everyone else seems to be leaving you behind may merely indicate progress away from the pack of lies that you have been fed throughout your life, that mere movement means that you are going anywhere, and the needle of the compass tells of which direction.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability: Casting caution aside

Does it count if you didn’t mean it that way, but others perceive that you did?  If you do X but intend Y, but others think that your X was intended as X, is it still valid?  And how does validity work, here — is it only if you declare to the world what your intentions were in the first place, or if you smile slyly and keep your inner intentions a secret, does it still count as “valid”?

Isn’t that ultimately what we are afraid of when we act upon something — that someone will think one way and we want them to think another, or otherwise there is some lack of correspondence between truth and the thoughts within?

When we are casting caution aside and others warn us of our impetuosity, do we pause and care to “correct the record” because we worry about what others might think?  Isn’t that one of the underlying reasons why Federal and Postal workers fail to initiate the process of 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?

We avoid that “tag” that everyone abhors — of a “malingerer” within the ranks.  Too much sick leave taken; not quite at the productive levels we once had a reputation for; excessive LWOP; constantly having appointments at the doctor’s office; and, suddenly, we believe that others are “staring” at us, judging us, whispering behind our backs.  Are they?  Or is it just my imagination running amok and creating a surreal universe of misperceived paranoia?

We become cautious, tentative, unsure of ourselves, wondering what our coworkers and supervisors are thinking.

Casting caution aside is not always an act of unthinking impetuosity or even of a gambler’s mindset. For, when a medical condition is involved, the only issue that matters is one of prioritizing one’s health, and preparing a Federal Disability Retirement application is often the best option available, and while others may consider the process as another pathway in casting caution aside, they simply do not know what you have endured, suffered and gone through before coming to such an important decision.

In the end, the universe of the subjective can never be judged by the mere appearances of the objective, and one’s opinion concerning the health of another cannot be valid without first experiencing the medical condition of the person suffering.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement Information: Action after words

Does the failure of an action to succeed a string of words make it automatically into a lie, or can it merely indicate a delay between thought and action, spoken words and action, or misinterpretation of words followed by non-action?  Are there phrases and afterthoughts that undermine and negate the initial statement of promised and anticipated actions, such that they “justify” the non-action?

For example, if a person says to another, “I will meet you at X restaurant at noon tomorrow,” but upon showing up at the place, the other person never appears; later, you bump into that same person and inquire about his non-appearance, and he states, “Oh, I became too busy and couldn’t come.”  Does that succeeding statement negate the previous statement; does it “explain” it; does it “supersede” it; or was it merely a statement that tells you that the person making it is rude, a bore, and someone to henceforth be suspicious of and mistrusting towards?

What if the same person had said some other things, like: “I thought better of it” or “I decided that I didn’t want to go out to lunch with you”.  As to the former, one might conclude that the person was somewhat odd; as to the latter, that he or she was unfriendly and did not deserve further consideration.  But what of the following statement: “I am so sorry. My mother was taken to the hospital suddenly and I completely forgot!  Please accept my sincere apologies!”  This last admission, of course, is the one that “justifies” the breaking of the prior commitment, and can be seen as the one where “forgiveness” and further consideration is accorded.

In every case, the action which follows after words determines the future course of how we view the person who spoke the words; yet, context and content do matter.

Take for example another scenario, where the person says, “I may be at X restaurant at noon tomorrow, or I may not.”  You show up at the place at noon and the person who made the statement does not show up.  Later, when you “bump into” the person, you say, “Why didn’t you show up at X restaurant,” and the person responds with, “Oh, as I said, I might have, but decided not to.”  Was there a broken promise?  Did the actions performed fail to “meet” with the words previously spoken?  No, and not only that – one could even argue that the person was quite true to his “word”.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are considering 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, the connection between “action” after “words” is always an important consideration to take into account, for there will be many steps through the administrative process where compatibility between the two will have to take place.

Will your doctor support your Federal Disability Retirement case when the “crunch time” arrives?  (The doctor will need to).  Will your Human Resource personnel do as they say? (Likely not).  Will your supervisor timely complete the SF 3112B? (Hmmm…).  Will OPM “act upon” the Federal Disability Retirement application after “saying” that they will? (Again, hmmmm…..).

Action after words – the foundation of sincerity.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: Perspectives, now and then

We all have them; and, like opinions and other discarded detritus unworthy of further consideration, we can replace them with others.  It is what Plato warned against in his allegorical narrative about the shadows against the Cave walls, and how the true form of reality was presented only after we were unshackled from our lying eyes.

Perspective, now and then, or “now” as opposed to “then”, can change.  It is the “now and then” and how you interpret that dependent clause that often matters.  Is it something that comes along once in a blue moon, or a changed, modified and altered perspective that differs now, as opposed to that obscure “then” – perhaps in youth, in early adulthood or in middle age?  When does a perspective remain constant, wise, worthy and consistent with reality such that we can grasp a hold of “it” and never let go? Or, are perspectives changeable, mutable, subject to reality’s compelling of alteration based upon the fluid circumstances of life’s misgivings?

In law school, there is the classic lesson taught in Criminal Law 101, where the professor has two actors come into the class all of a sudden, struggle, argue, then a loud “bang” is sounded, and one of them runs and the other falls dead.  Then, the students are asked to write down what they saw.  The notoriety of eye-witness accounts being so unreliable is quickly shown by the disparities revealed.

Nowadays, of course, with body cameras and video mechanisms running nonstop , we are subjected to a replay of scene after scene, and perspectives can change – except, of course, as to camera angle; what is actually seen no matter the constant replay; and of when the “record” button was pushed and how much contextual evidence had been left out before, or sometimes even after.

Medical conditions, too, alter perspectives.  Sometimes, when “subjective” medical conditions such as chronic pain or psychiatric conditions of depression and anxiety are never noticed until the severity became too great to bear, the other side of the perspective has to do with believability and veracity of acceptance.

Remember that there is always a difference between having a medical condition, and proving it.  That is why in preparing, formulating and 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 Federal or Postal employee must take into account the differing perspectives, now and then (in whichever form and whatever context) of your medical condition, how others see it, how it is proven, how your agency or the Postal facility views it all – in other words, perspectives far, wide, now and then, in preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Medical Retirement: The Negative Interest Rate

In periods of economic stagnation, where mass hoarding by depositors results in a slow-down of commercial activity, rising unemployment and deflationary returns on value-for purchase in all sectors, the idea that depositors must not only deposit, but further, pay regularly to keep their money with the bank, would at first glimpse appear counterintuitive.

Perhaps that was initially the brain-child of some half-crazed Economist — that one with the frizzy hair appearing on Sunday Shows who had won the Nobel Prize for Economics many decades ago because no one quite understood what he was talking about, and believed that such insanity was either too brilliant to bypass or, more likely, to fail to appear as if one understood it would be to reveal one’s own ignorance and mediocrity (remember Schopenhauer’s adage:  “Talent hits a target no one else can hit, while genius hits a target no one else can see”).  And so it goes.

The problem with unworkable theoretical constructs, however, is that the rest of us have to live with the consequences.  In reality, the concept of “negative interest rate” is one which most people have to live with, anyway.  For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers, this is a daily occurrence — especially for those who have a medical condition, such that the medical condition impacts the Federal or Postal employee’s ability and capacity to perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal positional duties.

For, like the concept of the negative rate of return, the Federal and Postal worker must not only go to work, but continue to pay for it with their deteriorating health.  Additionally, the increasing harassment, adverse actions and diminishing joy in working with hostile coworkers, managers and supervisors, must be borne with a smile and silent acquiescence, as if the feudal backdrops of self-flagellation must be enjoyed within the caverns of psychosis in suffering.

The negative interest rate for Federal and Postal employees is thus nothing new; it is a theoretical model for all Federal and Postal employees who suffer under the suffocating malaise of a deteriorating medical condition.  The real question is:  At what rate of negative returns does the Federal or Postal employee withdraw the deposit?  For, in pursuing this analogy, it is precisely that critical point where money-kept and money-lost reach a pinnacle of insufferable choices, when the Federal or Postal employee with a medical condition must consider 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.

For, when the interest charged begins to eat away at the very principal which is invested, and the rate of return negates the benefit of remaining, then it is indeed time to withdraw the deposit, and begin to prepare, formulate and file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through OPM, lest the negative interest rate which once, long ago, began as a theoretical construct in the basement of a mad economist, but which now pervades the ivory towers of polite academia with echoes of reverberating laughter once resounding from the insane asylum next door, begins to infect the four corners of a civilization which has lost its way.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Invasion of the Body Snatchers

The 1956 version of the film (the only one worth watching) was in black & white, and created a sensation among French Existentialists for the greatest horror committed upon a human being:  to strip one of all human emotion, and transform the person into a robotic automaton of sorts.

Camus’ novel, The Stranger, reveals a similar theme through the titular character, Meursault, where the absurdity of life, the indifference of humanity, all serve to compel him to commit a murder without reason or rationale, in a universe without emotion — until the very end when, faced with the certainty of the guillotine, he responds with rage at a chaplain who wants him to atone for his sins.

Life itself can be the slow drip-drip-drip of stripping one of emotions, somewhat like spores which fall and turn into seed pods, and slowly attaches, drains, and diminishes the uniqueness of the individual; or like the greater absurdity of performing apparently meaningless tasks, where a sense of separateness and division occurs as a chasm between worth and work, as when Sisyphus rolls the boulder up the hill, only to see it slither back down the other side.

Medical conditions sometimes awaken us from the slumber of absurdity.  It is in and of itself an anomaly of sorts, to have to face the mortality and fragility of one’s life, thereby unraveling thoughts of worthiness in a world devoid of care, empathy or concern.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, for the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal worker, is a step taken to climb out of that chasm or void of dissipating meaningfulness.  For, when a medical condition begins to impact one’s capacity and ability to continue bringing meaning and purposefulness to a job, within a context of an agency which shows indifference and outright animosity, it is time to escape the alien pods and devise an escape route from the invasion of the body snatchers.

It is like Sartre’s quip that Hell “is other people” — of that moment when a person looks through a keyhole and views another as a mere object, then senses someone else behind, and realizes that you were being watched watching others as an object, only to be considered as an object as well.  Similarly, when a Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service begins to treat the Federal or Postal employee as a fungible object of nominal worth, it is time to seek and monetize one’s worth at another location, another context, a different venue.

Medical conditions demean and diminish in multiple ways:  one’s own consciousness recognizes the devaluation of being “less than whole”; others begin to approach and treat with trepidation; and Federal agencies and the U.S. Postal Service fail to accommodate according to the laws already in place.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through OPM, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is a means to an end.  The “means” requires an affirmative step by the Federal or Postal employee to traverse from the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service by beginning the preparation and formulation for filing of an OPM Disability Retirement application; the “exit” is the concerted effort to run afar from those spores from heaven, as the body snatchers who drain life and vitality through the keyhole of sanity where absurdity and meaning clash in a titanic battle for human worth.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: House of Cards

We have all built them as children; those shantytown assemblages like the poverty-stricken and make-shift huts constructed by corrugated debris gathered from refuse and discarded materials, flimsy and ready to collapse, if not by architectural fault lines, then certainly from the sudden and malicious puff of air emitted by one’s younger brother or sister tiptoeing  up from behind in a sneak attack.  The House of Cards — they test the dexterity and patience of one’s character, and simultaneously represent anything built on a precarious foundation, including business ventures, family relationships, and of life itself.

For the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal worker who suffers from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to impact one’s ability and capacity to perform the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal positional duties, the concept of a House of Cards can become quite personal, and in the modern proverbial metaphor, “hit close to home”.

Daily, the precarious and tenuous state of one’s employment status is tested by sudden and unexpected winds of fate, by sneak attacks and underhanded methods of operational malice.  A sudden stir of the atmosphere, a deliberate act of adversity, or the unsuspected whisper of undermining; they all amount to the same:  an attempt to further weaken the foundations which were already being tested.

The option the Federal or Postal employee needs to consider, is to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, because if the foundation of one’s life has already become shaky, the fall itself is an inevitability when confronted by the vast behemoth of the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service.

Just as 2 out of the 3 little pigs came to understand and appreciate the necessity of a firm foundation, so the Federal or Postal employee should see the wisdom in fleeing from under the House of Cards, and consider filing for Federal OPM Disability Retirement benefits; for, they ran to the third when they could, and lucky for them, the Big Bad Wolf could not get to them — at least not in some versions of the tale.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire