FERS Disability: civil service medical retirement

Medical Retirement from Federal Gov. Employment: That sigh of regret

December 9, 2016

It is released without consciousness of foresight, or random expectation of hope to come. Often, merely an involuntary deviation from a carefully-guarded appearance, that sigh of regret escapes with a haunting echo of mirthless exhaustion. Is there a time when past regrets catch up to present dismay, obfuscated by the loss of any future hope to reinvigorate? What is regret but a deed left undone, a trepidation leading to inaction when flight of carefree abandonment embraced us for a moment, […]

Federal Disability Retirement: Tantum ergo

December 6, 2016

It is the incipit of the last two verses of a Medieval Latin hymn written by St. Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas is best known for his inclusive osmosis by fiat of stretched logic to accommodate and force commensurability the texts of the ancients (i.e., Aristotle) within the essential boundaries of Christian theology. His methodology in accomplishing this feat was to posit the weakest of straw man arguments, then to systematically appear to knock them down, and then to declare a forceful conclusion as if the ergo naturally and rationally followed. That the conclusion is followed by verses subsequent, reflects how life works as well. […]

Federal Disability Retirement: The beleaguered soul

December 5, 2016

They walk among us. In modern parlance, the metaphor is equipped with “zombies” and the popularity of such cultural fodder. People tend to watch such shows and laugh with nervous chatter; but the truth is, there is some inner fear and trepidation that is reflected by such haunting tales, where comedy is fused with the absurd. The idea itself reverberates with signification of a nervous reality. It is likened to that old movie (the 1956 version, not the 1978 remake), Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which frightened the French Existentialists because of the denial of that one human characteristic that made life worth living […]

Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: Trepidation

December 1, 2016

In this universe where pause reflects cautionary exposure, the Darwinian model of survival of the fittest prevails. Ours is a society that lacks any patience; the youthful generation deems their “place” as a rightful commodity to assert without bashfulness; the old are shoved aside into old folks’ homes and nursing facilities, all the while as we give lip-service to the importance of love, family and care for one another. […]

Disability Retirement for Federal Employees: Understanding

November 25, 2016

The Master asks one of his two dogs, “Where is ___?” If the second pet wags her tail, looks quizzically at the owner, then proceeds to go to the far end of the next room and locates the wandering misfit and barks to you that she has found him – do we disbelieve? If the same question were to be asked of one’s child in reference to a sibling, and the identical result occurs where the first child goes into another room or runs up into the attic and locates the lost soul, would there be any doubt? […]

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Private thoughts, public offerings

November 12, 2016

The bifurcation of human contemplation can take many forms, and rarely do they conflict with each other, unless the former is involuntarily injected into the cauldron of the latter. One can hold private thoughts contrary to one’s public image; and the public self can contradict the private soul without a condemnation of hypocrisy, so long as the two are never manifested as unconcealed revelations of surprised protocols. We suspect that exacting consistency between the former and latter has never existed in the history of mankind – beginning with the dawn of hunters who trembled with an inner fear so violent that want of flight […]

Medical Retirement from Civil Service: Recognizing the best of times

November 9, 2016

Often, we mistake short-term travails with the chronic despair experienced by some. In the midst of an experiential trauma, compounded by a lack of capacity to consider the limited perspective we find ourselves in, the enmeshment of the “now” without any insight for a better tomorrow, a future to behold nor a distance aglow with the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, inflames the inner Darwinian categories of instinctive responsiveness to merely survive. In retrospect, one’s judgment on any particular day or time, or even of an event remembered, may be altered. We may even point to that slice of life and state with aplomb, “It was actually the best of times.” […]

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: The limited reservoir

November 5, 2016

What if the reserve is limited, but we are never informed of it? Perhaps the gods, fate or however the source of creation is defined, has placed a quota upon the extent of that which is expended, but we are never included in the corporate decision-making process – then, what? Death, insanity or just plain debilitation and stoppage of activity; is that what we call “an unfortunate end”? By “reservoir”, we normally mean that natural or artificial accumulation that is used for a specified purpose – the town’s water supply; a special cache of good wines; […]

Federal Disability Retirement: The magical potion of impotence

October 29, 2016

It is the insertion of the preposition, or the omission thereof, which makes for the alteration of meaning and the subtlety of conceptual differentiation. Note that it is the grammatical playground – “of” – as opposed to “for”; and that small distinction makes for a vast difference. For, if the latter would replace the former, then it would mean a declaration of a solution to the age-old problem of what old age does to us, what loss of vigor for life, stamina in living, and deterioration of purpose makes of us. […]

OPM Federal Employee Disability Retirement: A traveler’s perspective

October 18, 2016

How is it that a tourist can see the same building which local people pass by every day, as something of an attraction worthy of encapsulating and embalming for posterity’s sake, with a click of the camera? What is it about the eye of the traveler which is different from the staid repetitiveness of the citizen occupying for decades, centuries, and eons long forgotten, which challenges the uniqueness of stability and contrasts it as against the unwanted forces of change? Like tectonic shifts, mass migrations armed with Smartphones […]