FERS Disability: OPM medical retirement

OPM Disability Retirement for Federal & Postal Employees: Alone

March 4, 2017

We enter into this impervious universe in such a state. Yes, yes – there are parents surrounding, love embracing and doctors, nurses and hospital attendants with smiling faces and all of that; but being alone is conceptually distinct from loneliness, and one can be surrounded by a multitude of social acquaintances, family members and close and distant relatives, and still bear the weight of the latter, and yet know throughout that one is nevertheless alone in this world. […]

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Leaving things to pure chance

March 2, 2017

We rarely do that. Yes, we sometimes allow for a partiality of such circumstances to remain, knowing that it may or may not happen; but the conceptual distinction between “pure” and left otherwise is a gap likened between omniscience and imperfect knowledge, or the ability to observe brilliance in action while the rest of us scrounge about for some semblance of competence. Then, of course, there is a wide chasm in the spectrum of what it means to leave things to chance, in contradistinction to “pure” chance. The difference is often seen as tantamount to the extreme arbitrariness of lack of human involvement […]

Disability Retirement for Federal Employees: Tomorrow’s project delayed

February 27, 2017

We tend to delay that which we know is best for us, and embrace the moment for which we pay a dear price. Man was created to engage projects; a purpose for life, a value for living, a reason to live. Why it is important to initiate, continue, accomplish and involve, are considerable in quantity: to make a living; to be compensated for work employed; to create and construct for the betterment of community and the greater world; and not merely because Heidegger posits that it is to avoid our mortality and the inevitability of our fate. […]

Medical Retirement from Civil Service: The Clock

February 24, 2017

It is an interesting device. We can try and project back to a time of its non-existence, or at least when not every household owned one. What could it have been like? Where the hour was guessed at by the position of the sun – or was that not even part of the thought process? Did the sun, dawn, dusk and twilight merely present a foreboding for a different paradigm? […]

OPM Disability Retirement: The hospital bed

February 23, 2017

It is a lonely and demoralizing state of affairs; they poke, prod and insist upon ruling out every sector of one’s body as the culprit of diagnosed maladies. The hospital bed is a barbaric contraption next to a mediaeval torture chamber, and one can only imagine what such inventions were like in those olden days, when antiseptic means meant the possibility of washing one’s hands every now and again, and where pain and death were part of everyday living. It reminds us, above all, of our own vulnerability and mortality; and what a blessing health and life are. […]

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? […]

Federal Disability Retirement: What to do

February 10, 2017

Does anyone really know what to do? From the very beginning, we are brought into this world without having been asked, and never with any instructions entitled, “Life instructions in ‘how to’”. Instead, we are thrown into the ravages of this impervious universe. We are lucky if we have some kind parents; otherwise, as with most of us, they are as clueless as we are, and sometimes even more so. What do we do with the rest of our lives? How do we determine if the course we have chosen is worthwhile? When do we determine if the choices presented are the ones that will forever be offered, […]

Medical Retirement from Civil Service: Preparing properly for each stage

February 6, 2017

We often hear (and perhaps secretly scoff at?) the modern verbiage of a “Holistic” approach, where the missing consonant makes all the difference – as in the non-word, “Whole-istic”. It is the approach often ignored and replaced by its cousin – of looking at each stage […]

FERS Disability Retirement Application: The tools we have for use

February 4, 2017

The foundation is always “all-important”; but there are other tools at one’s disposal, and the question is: Do we know and recognize what those tools are, and if not, how can we use them out of ignorance? How does SSDI intersect with FERS Disability retirement […]

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. […]