Early Retirement for Injured Federal Employees
The proof that must be shown, by a preponderance of the evidence, is that the Federal or Postal worker has a deficiency with respect to performance, conduct or attendance, or in the absence of any actual service deficiency, a showing that the medical condition is incompatible with either useful service or retention in the position held. In recent months, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management […]
Illness creates the need for time and forces time to stand still for treatment, recuperation, attending, and resting. Time is the commodity we no longer have in modernity, where the busy-ness of life’s travails just to survive forces everyone to walk about in a daze of exhaustion and thoughtless fatigue for fear of failure in this driven society. The chasm between illness and time is that blur of life […]
So much time is spent upon the anticipation of some event in the distant future; or, perhaps merely tomorrow, next week, next year. Here is where we are; in the “now”, the immediacy of a life being lived. Human beings are peculiar, unique and devastatingly unaware to that extent; we give lip-service to the notion of attaining happiness, joy and the capacity to relish the precious gift of life, while all the while failing to embrace and embody the here of this moment. […]
The evocative images of such a metaphorical phrase are immediately understood by most. As in challenges we all face throughout life, a river snakes across different and foreign terrain; in some seasons, a drought may dry up the vibrancy of the river, while in times of plenty, flooding and overabundance may occur. There are periods of swift currents, and days of lazy haze; and underneath the calm exterior is an underworld of activity and blur of living, both of tumult as well as those timeless memories forever remembered, and it is precisely the paradigm upon which Heraclitus staked his perspective upon with the statement that “No man steps in the same river twice.” […]
Garbage in, garbage out; leave the door wide open, and the flies come in; “we don’t live in a barn”; and other similar quips, quotes and quotidian truths abound to guide us throughout the day. In Medieval times, the Gatekeeper held a prominent position of authority and safekeeping; trust was of paramount importance, and the potential for bribery to undermine loyalty and fealty to the inhabitants of the Court or Castle meant that treatment of the assigned individual demanded respect as well as adequate renumeration. […]
Most of us are familiar with the fairytale; but in modernity, the principle extrapolated has been extended thus: the natural pendulum of occurrences must fall within a certain set of margins, as opposed to reaching the outer limits of extremes. And, indeed, most things settle into a comfortable compromise of corollary constancy; it is precisely because of the anomaly of extremes that we take special note of the exceptions which develop and manifest. And that is always the continuing hope of most individuals — for a reaching of compromise, and static settling into a middle ground, etc. […]
If there are innate, underlying underpinnings of genetic inlays which provide for greater advantages in the evolutionary progression for those who consider survival of the fittest to be the teleological force behind man’s advancement, then the character trait […]
Life itself rarely reflects a steady, linear progression on a graph; the zig-zagging representing times of economic turmoil more accurately profiles a person’s span of existence. Moreover, one’s career is not necessarily the essence or paradigm of a given life’s experience; there are multiple factors, including emotional, births and deaths, marriages and medical conditions. How does one quantify an experience? […]
It is a self-evident statement, a tautology of sorts, that seasons come and go; for, by definition (and thus an allegedly a priori statement), a season is that which had something preceding it, changed, and will alter its course into a future one, in a cyclical fashion of interminable regularity. It is the effects upon individuals which often fail to change, as people are not subject to the universal principles of the physical world in the same way as planetary systems and nature’s repetitive elements. […]
Something catches one’s notice; perhaps an odd movement, a dotted color scheme of minute origins and insignificant except in contrast to the toneless surroundings; or, because of a survival instinct still active from a forgotten history of evolutionary need, a signal of caution that danger may be lurking. The eyes shift; the attempt to focus upon that which was noticed through one’s peripheral vision, is suddenly lost forever. […]