Early Retirement for Injured Federal Employees
Although we try and control it, it defies such control; and the best that can be accomplished is a paltry attempt at managing it. Whether with the five minutes to feel the warmth of a steaming cup of coffee, a fifteen minute meditative stance of inner quietude, or a 2 mile run with earphones on to become lost in the rhythmic monotony of jogging within the insular world of a musical beat; […]
It is always the next steps which determine the relevance and efficacy of the prior ones; a misstep can extinguish the progress made from the ones before; a stumble can irrevocably diminish the gains already made; and a fall can destroy the foundation of past steps already taken. What to do next? We can stumble through; brashly forge forward despite unmapped territories that can harm and destroy; […]
Is it by actions followed by words, or by mere words spoken that it develops, solidifies and concretizes? Can we really go by appearances alone, or must there be a history of words followed by actions, followed further by assurances, then again by more actions, until a sense of comfort and solidarity of feeling comes together to form an aggregate whole where we declare within our inner consciences, “Yes, I trust him (her)”? […]
It is a game we play, or perhaps “have to” in order to retain our fantasy-world and “pretend” selves. We like to think that we gave up, long ago, those childish dreams and fantasies we engaged and tolerated as younger selves, and that as adults we must daily face the realities of problems encountered, difficulties arisen and turmoil challenged. But we haven’t. We have merely replaced it with another, more productive methodology of play-acting: Forgetting, for the moment. […]
Most “secrets” are well-known; it is the combining of a multiplicity of the unknown, which constitutes the importance of leaked information. Thus, it may be disseminated as to the “what”, but until it can be connected to the “when” or the “who”, the irrelevancy of the data remains in its isolation of significance. Or, perhaps what will occur is revealed, and by whom, and even the destined time and place; but if caution delays the planned event for another day, hypervigilance can only be maintained for a limited period of time before exhaustion of focus, concentration and attentiveness wanes by profound fatigue. […]
There are certain phrases that turn one’s attention, and daydreams of exotic lands and foreign places become projected onto one’s imagination, like camels, Arabian nights and sand dunes in faraway corners. But, then, reality imposes itself; such places probably exist a few miles hence; those distant lands are now war-torn and deemed by the State Department to be forbidden avenues for sightseers and tourists in cut-off shorts and Hawaiian Shirts (did you know that the latter are apparently “back in style” – as if they ever were?), with warnings and cautionary predictions where officialdom has already evacuated the premises. […]