FERS Disability: opm hostile work environment guidance

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Comfort in regularity

December 29, 2016

There are those who relish the seas of daily change and the excitement of altered circumstances in daily discourse. But as the rhythms of a seasonal perpetuity teach us of Nature’s need for regularity, so the biorhythms imparted can often form avenues of predictable patterns. There is comfort in regularity (no, for those with singular minds, we are not here referring to the constancy of utilizing bathroom facilities; although, there is also some truth in that perspective, as well); of engaging in the monotony of expectations, unchanging circumstances and boredom of daily redundancy. […]

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement from OPM: The key

October 3, 2016

It is both a tool of utility in order to gain entrance and accessibility to an otherwise abrupt encounter with an obstacle barring further forward progress, as well as a well-worn metaphor appropriately applied to miracles, magic and moments of mandatory martyrdom. It is a wonder that a slight defect in the metallic shaving of the implement can allow for the turning of it, and opening into the entranceway, but for that additional indentation; or of a barcode smudged which refuses to make an allowance. In either case, whether as a physical tool or an electronic pass embedded in the plastic sheen of society’s muse, what it opens is the foundation for its very existence. […]

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: The complexity of human experience

June 18, 2016

We take for granted much, and dismiss with careless appreciation the residue of crumbs begotten. The idiom that refers to the final straw which breaks a camel’s back — why does the foreign species have an impact upon a culture which is unfamiliar with such a beast of burden? Is it that, despite the images produced against the background of pyramids and pharaohs of a bygone civilization, the essence and theme of the proverbial statement resonates, whether replaced by a horse, a donkey or an ox? […]

Federal Employee Disability Retirement under FERS or CSRS: Junkyards

June 10, 2016

It is the latter in the compound word which is left forgotten and unnoticed, precisely because of the screaming blare represented by the former, demanding attention by the sheer nature and character of its breaching sensibilities, like the spoiled cousin refusing to abide by the conventions imposed upon uninvited visitors and customs curtailing unwanted guests. Once, before time forgotten and memories untarnished, the landscape was perhaps a pasture green with wildflowers and vegetation overgrown; then, a possessor who perhaps put up a fence to demarcate the beauty […]

OPM Medical Retirement under FERS or CSRS: Hey, at least he has a nice hairstyle

June 4, 2016

Dismissing all substantive imperfections, the phrase connotes that which we are left with: a trope of magnanimous inanity. The classic scene, of course, if one’s memory serves one well (and, concurrently, if one wants to reveal the generation from whence one came), is where “The Fonz” in the popular but antiquated sitcom, “Happy Days,” enters the bathroom at the local diner, and as he is about to comb back his grease-filled hair, stops, pauses, looks again, then declares with but a barely intelligible word, confirming the picture-perfect reflection of the image in the mirror, affirming that no amount of further effort would improve upon an already self-evident apogee of creation. […]

Medical Retirement from Federal Government Employment: That big oak tree

May 28, 2016

It is the lasting image we hold onto. On a warm, sunny day, in the carefree tapestry of a summer month, without cares or worries to haunt or ruminate by; perhaps the gentle sounds of a nearby stream and a cool breeze whispering softly the rustling leaves bright green in their early unravelling, still months away before the harsh August sun turns them into the crinkly brown of late Fall. We dream of those times; perhaps, there never was a moment when life was without difficulties and lying beneath the shade of that big oak tree allowed for smiles of quiet content and soothing moments of careless thoughts. […]

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: The mere asking of a question

May 14, 2016

In modernity, the asking of the question in itself raises a suspicion. Being curious no longer kills the cat in some obscure, proverbial manner; to inquire immediately brands the individual and categorizes the questioner based upon the query of conventional consciousness. Thus is debate of any kind quelled; for, to engage in a dialectical process requires a prefatory landscape of imaginative fertility; […]

FERS & CSRS Medical Retirement: The insular world of anger

May 11, 2016

It must be strange to live in a constant cacophony of anger; of a persistent and unrelenting fire pit, where demons jump from ashen glowering of hot red coals to roaring flames of unceasing rage, and back again and yet for more, ever fuming from the slights and hurts both imagined and real, but never able to escape from the corridors of one’s own making. It is, in the end, an emotion of self-destructive turmoil, perpetrating a defiance of civility in order to engage in the ultimate self-immolation, but without honor or quietude, and thus left with the emptiness of seppuku without meditative resilience. […]

FERS Disability Retirement: The implication of ‘finding happiness’

May 6, 2016

Human beings live in a duality of universes; within the linear historicity of an objective world, daily unfolding with encounters with physical objects and other beings, comprised of interactions both superficial and intimate, combined with utilization of inanimate constructs for daily living; then, there is the insular universe of a parallel phenomena, where we are subsumed by a conceptual menagerie of language, numbers, extrapolated forms of ideas and strings of thought processes; and how we coordinate and intersect the two determines the success or failure of who we are, how we thrive and to what teleological end we pursue. […]