FERS Disability: help with sf 3112 disability application package

Federal Disability Retirement: A remnant of bygone memories

August 28, 2017

Memories are funny animals; they travel and traverse endless miles of countless eternities, over fences artificially constructed and through tunnels built within the deep caverns of one’s mind; and in the end, they represent only a slice of accuracy in the whole of what really happened. Sometimes, even after decades of being together with a “significant other”, a remnant of bygone memories erupts. Perhaps some scent, or something someone said, […]

Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: The elixir of life

June 17, 2017

Is the substance we expunge necessarily the opposite of the positive? Does the mere fact of expiation denote that which is unwanted, or merely no longer of utility? In ancient times, an elixir was considered to be a substance of great desirability; it possessed multiple meanings, including a reference to that substance which was used in alchemy to alter base-metals into the gleaming riches of the natural order found deep beneath the chasms of the earth – gold. […]

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Analogies

April 25, 2017

It is the greater concept often developed through metaphors and similes; but to the extent they are now of use depends largely upon the shared cultural context within which we live. If Classical literature is no longer the common thread of meaningful discourse, can references to them in creating analogies work? To share that a person’s tragedy is more Shakespeare than Milton, or that the individual’s circumstances remind one more akin to The Road to Wigan Pier […]

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: The centrality of fringe

October 17, 2016

In whatever definition one wants to adopt, the meaning is clear: It is that which is on the outer periphery, and not central to the essence recognized. But what if the reversal occurs? Can that even be imagined? Can the fringe constitute a substantive centrality, and yet retain the stability of its essence? And, once the mirror conversion occurs, does the identification remain as it was, or do we accept the fringe elements as the convention, and the formerly known staid components as outside the normative foundations of an acceptable core? […]

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Other people’s misery

September 12, 2016

Why is it that the misery of others tends to soothe our own? Yes, yes – we grant the common and appropriate responses of heartfelt empathy and facial frowns and perhaps even some tears; but in the end, is it because of the resulting comparative analysis – of a cold, rational and logical methodology of responsive behavior – that we appease the gods of fate in some primitive form of sacrificing others, knowing that so long as the traveling karma has not yet noticed our own plight of devious accord, we are safe for another day? […]

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: The Venting Venue

August 10, 2016

It is a necessary doorway (or so we are told) in order to attain sound psychological health; that, within the raging furnace of subsumed consciousness, of passions suppressed and grievances left unstated but yet seething beneath the subterranean caverns of unspecified aggregations of cumulative powder kegs confined by bloated egos, there remains a need for the fissure to emit the toxicities of life. Or not. The content of such emissions, of course, can never be challenged; it is only the context which should be questioned, in this age where subjectivity rules, the personal pronoun delegates, […]

OPM Disability Retirement: Loss of that subtle distinction — fun versus training

July 7, 2016

Reading older works of literature is a lesson in historical perspective; times were different, and not just slightly, but by leaps and bounds. The linear nature of lives results in the incremental adaptation by evolutionary subtlety; that was precisely Darwin’s argument — that the metamorphosis reacting to physiological necessity in order to allow for the propagation of any given species, occurs not by genetic alterations involving sudden and drastic earthquakes, but by slow, almost undetectable nuances of change. […]

Medical Retirement from Federal Government Employment: Life’s Joke

July 2, 2016

The funniest line in literature comes from Carl Sandburg’s “Potato Face Blind Man” stories, where he describes the reason for the wooden mug: “There is a hole in the bottom of it. The hole is as big as the bottom. The nickel goes in and comes out again. It is for the very poor people who wish to give me a nickel and yet get the nickel back.” Satire has often been overly-discussed, and attempting to explain why a particular scene, line or story is amusing, is somewhat like trying to explain to a Martian why Bradbury’s chronicles fascinated […]

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Pipe Dreams

July 1, 2016

The origin denotes an unsavory history of imperialistic exploitation and deserved degeneration of culturally unseen and unforetold consequences; of an encounter between foreign soils bridged by greed, necessity and inevitable destinies, but where the conqueror reaped more than what it sought. In the opium dens which followed and the devastation of addictions ensuing, the phantoms derived from the processing of a plant which otherwise concealed the deadliness of its essence, beautiful in its floral toxicity amidst the sweet aroma that diffusely pervaded an unsuspecting population — dreams, indeed, of unreachable heights and great expectations otherwise squandered. […]

OPM Disability Retirement: Another Test

February 4, 2016

Peel an orange, and you have the fruit; skin a nut, and the unmasked food is revealed; but how does one get to the essence of a person? Schools do it repetitively; job interviews count on it; security clearances rely upon it. Life is one set of tests after another; and whether through formalized questions designed to reveal the extent of rote knowledge, or of more subtle encounters to discover one’s character, the attempt to unravel the essence of an individual comes in many forms, in multitudinous appearances, and in engagements which never fully define the person tested. […]