Early Retirement for Injured Federal Employees
It is the minor skirmishes of life that maintain the vitality of everyday existence; they are fought in preparation for the greater battles and campaigns. That is why a ‘strategy’ is important; otherwise, taking the same hill countless times in a day leads one to wonder what the greater plan is. For, futility and the sense of meaninglessness are what defeat any motivation to continue. […]
We don’t seem to have a capacity to share of those things which we have no need, anymore. Does scarcity of resources result in “doubling down” in ways formerly described as miserly in deed? Does the free market principle of supply and demand explain the loss of social grace in responding to need? What ever happened to the spare tire, the jingle of spare change, and the ephemeral absence of spare time? Has society come to a criss-cross of contending forces, where the explosion of population growth, the rise of the middle class in developing nations around the globe, coupled with the exponential depletion of finite resources, have cumulatively coalesced to an incandescent compromise of character crisis? […]
The word itself is a linear sequence of consonants and vowels which delight the linguistic palate of parallelism between sound and meaning; rolling off of the tongue, it begins with the soft purr of the ‘s’, then slides midway into the harsh and guttural clash of a germanic cough, as if something untoward has been stuck in the center of one’s throat which needs to be cleared, like phlegm gathered in the mucous membranes of the respiratory passages; then flows to the end and drifts off into a quietude of irrelevance, disregard and dismissal, as the pointed meaning of application coincides with the diminishing utterance of fading signification. […]
Having a medical condition necessarily results in a state of solitude. While others can empathize, no one else can fully comprehend the totality of the experiential turmoil and trauma, the emotional, physical and psychological toll upon the diminished personhood and the daily struggle endured. It is a solitary state of existence, and all the more so when individuals, agencies, friends, family and acquaintances fail to take the time to understand. […]
He was a person who “gave his all” each day as he quietly and competently performed his duties. The accolades came slowly, but consistently, and with laudatory praises over the years; with cash incentives and awards, and performance ratings where negative criticisms were dotted as mere formalities […]