Federal Disability Retirement: The tangents that bind

Last Updated on August 22, 2017 by FERS Disability Attorney

They are often viewed as mere distractions – those activities that fail to follow the centrality and linear path of core, essential projects.  Or, more often than not, they are the wanderings and linguistic meanderings that make verbal communication all the more interesting – you know, that person that suddenly goes off on a tangent and tells an otherwise interesting story, but leaves you scratching your head with puzzlement and left dumbfounded.

In an even different sense, it can mean those quirky hobbies or sidelined projects; even of collecting matchbox cars, comic books or getting excited over stamps.  Stamps?  Matchbox cars?  Comic books for adults?  These are the tangents of life that bind.  We don’t often see them that way, because they are, in the larger scheme of things, somewhat insignificant, irrelevant and entirely superfluous to the greater population.  But what people often do not realize, is that tangents provide the glue that binds; for, if not for the distractions, hobbies and projects that give us a respite from the daily stresses of our lives, life itself would become a jumble of intolerable consequences.

Then, when a medical condition enters a picture, where the chronic pain or the psychiatric impact makes even those tangents no longer pleasurable, such a state of being then makes the rest of life unbearable.

For the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker 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 one’s Federal or Postal position, it becomes quite apparent that when the tangents that bind no longer cement the worthwhile perspective of life’s meaningfulness, it is definitely time to consider preparing, formulating and filing 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.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire