FERS Disability: fers disability retirement handbook

OPM Medical Retirement under FERS & CSRS: Admission

May 25, 2017

It is a noun of peculiar variability, perhaps all interconnected upon reflection. It can refer to the permission to enter, whether by right, payment or removal of obstacles; or, denoting the price of such entrance; or even yet, a confession or acknowledgment of a point taken; and in other contexts, of being accepted into a fraternity of sorts, as in “admission to a university” or “to the legal bar” – meaning, not an actual, physical movement through gates now open, but a conceptual membership into a community of selective individuals. […]

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: Comfort in regularity

April 10, 2017

We thrive and relish in it, despite our protestations to the contrary; and while most of us utter monologues denouncing the boredom of imposed seclusion, and for fleeting moments envy the adventurer, the person constantly living “on the edge”, and that proverbial black sheep who seems to wander from aimless job to dead-end ones, the majority of the population is resigned to being sheep-like, […]

Federal Disability Retirement Benefits: Contented misery

March 22, 2017

Does the one who strives for happiness as a goal ever escape the bonds of contented misery? It is the ecstasy of a moment’s glimpse, and then the feeling is gone; for, such is the fleeting nature of a sensation, and more of an encumbrance than a plateau of embraced attainment. Can happiness be gauged, like a heart monitor, taking one’s blood pressure, or in that millisecond of pain in determining the glucose level through the pinprick of time? Once, in generations past, when neighbors asked of one another the state of affairs, […]

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: No time for empathy

March 9, 2017

Perhaps its disappearance and rarer occurrences are not because of defection of angels and loss of virtue from the circumference of human character, but for a much simpler reason: We have no time for it, nor patience, nor capacity to embrace. Often, the intersection between the reality of our social constructs and the loss of moral foundations […]

Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: Day after day

February 20, 2017

Is monotony a negative trait? How about consistency? What is it in life that we strive for, search out and look under stones and around corners? Is it possible that the life we already have, live by and daily “just do” is the one that is fated, meant to be, and of a satisfactory contentment such that change and disruption would be an unwelcome alteration? […]

Civil Service Disability Retirement Benefits: Human activity

February 15, 2017

The dizzying pace of it all defies comprehension. We are, indeed, busy-bees, always engaged in this project, that protest, intervening in the affairs of others when our own are in such a state of disarray; up at it early in the morning and continuing until exhaustion sets in or wayward dementia in old age where even nursing homes impose human activity every night – bingo, dance, meditation, Tai Chi, family visitation day; not even a break for the aged. […]

Federal Disability Retirement Law: Care to Perfection

February 2, 2017

At what point does one ascend from mere care, to perfection of accomplishment? Is it when we determine that which matters to us most – i.e., where self-interest intersects with talent otherwise left unfulfilled? Or, through maturity of purpose and a self-realization that perfection is preferable to a lesser kindling of care, does one simply “buck up” and seek to embrace a higher order of accomplishments?

Perfection is an impossible standard to attain; care, a reasonably easy one, because time, effort and struggled attempts compensate for any lack of natural talent. […]

Disability Retirement for Federal Employees: The factors to consider

January 25, 2017

Whenever a problem arises, are you the kind of person who immediately rushes headfirst in order to “solve” it? Are you like a first responder who by necessity, duty or conscience of being, sprints to save and runs to resolve? Or, in contradistinction to circumstances that require thoughtless effort but urgent actions, do you consider the factors and ask the question, What criteria must be applied? What would be considered a resolution of the problem, as opposed to a temporary cessation of a crisis-driven implementation? […]

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Natural empathy

January 20, 2017

Is there such a thing, or do we just fake it even when we do not naturally “feel” it? If the official, technical definition fails to make the distinction between “feeling” and “understanding”, does it not discount the differentiation of the traditional bifurcation – that of rational capacity as opposed to part of one’s emotional quotient? […]

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirements: Focus away from ‘self’

December 30, 2016

The heightened problems emanating from a chronic medical condition cannot be quantified; as the medical issues themselves become exacerbated while attempting to work and engage in other “major life activities”, the pain, psychiatric debilitation and interruption of things once taken for granted, become all the more magnified and exponentially exaggerated in significance, relevance and focus of daily contention. Or, to put it in more common parlance, it makes us grouchier as the day goes. Federal Disability Retirement […]