FERS Disability: should employee be placed on leave without pay pending disability retirement

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Suffering

July 17, 2017

It is something that cannot be avoided; it is part of life, of living, of engaging. The history of it existence is palpable; the tactile images throughout can be experienced in images painted and words described; and the various religions embrace it – some as a foundation that allows for forgiveness to alleviate that felt by others; many, as a foundation to explain it away; and still others, to train a disciplined life in order to avoid it, or at least to contain it. Whether by meditation or medication; through enduring or embracing; […]

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: No time for empathy

March 9, 2017

Perhaps its disappearance and rarer occurrences are not because of defection of angels and loss of virtue from the circumference of human character, but for a much simpler reason: We have no time for it, nor patience, nor capacity to embrace. Often, the intersection between the reality of our social constructs and the loss of moral foundations […]

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: The Damascus Depiction

February 23, 2016

The story of Saul of Tarsus was the only true depiction of conversion, of the contrasting alteration of extremes on a spectrum of change; all others following, including Augustine’s Confessions, are mere exaggerations in order to rise to the level of profound comparison between the ‘before’ and the ‘after’. Such a generalization may be disputed, obviously; but isn’t it interesting how, in the tradition of that telling of the metamorphosis, so many religious leaders seem to feel that their own ‘personal story‘ of conversion needs to somehow compete with the original? […]

Federal Disability Retirement: The Hesitant Hole

February 18, 2016

The famous one, of course, and the one which draws the imagination, is depicted in Lewis Carroll’s tale of Alice and her journey down the rabbit’s abyss; another, the one which determines the relative shortcomings of weather predictability, but that one is guided more by shadows and perceptions from above, as opposed to the one dug below; or, there is the one which we dig for ourselves, and the proverbial timelessness of our foolish deeds. […]

Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: The Future of Now

December 21, 2015

Human beings have the unlimited capacity of projecting into the future, such that a present picture of what may occur some time hence can be visualized; but whether and how many bring the future to the fore, such that the present becomes encompassed into the reflective reality of current circumstances, is of an imaginative rendering few take the time to engage in. By focusing upon the future as some ethereal fog somewhere in the distant netherworlds, we can justify the tendency to procrastinate and kick the proverbial can down the road; […]

OPM Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: Identity Theft

December 2, 2015

Concerns over “identity theft” abound in this information age where an almost unlimited trove of personal data gets transmitted through the ethereal universe of the Internet. Certainly, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management itself should be aware of this, with the recent hacking of Social Security Numbers, birth dates, responses to security questions, etc., and their failure to protect such sensitive caches of information. But such thievery is normally recoverable; new passwords and keywords can be changed and obtained; additional walls of security impositions can be constructed, and life can be returned to a relative level of normalcy, with mere vestiges of fading memories of inconvenience to haunt our daily lives. […]

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Observing Dogs

November 25, 2015

They belie conformity of thought, though they are willing to obey and follow strict adherence to rules and commands; and while “experts” in clothing of meandering letters, capitalized after the patronymic lineage displayed proudly as designators of validity and knowledge, may conclude that they neither smile, nor exhibit greater intelligence than primates deemed closer to our ancestral genetic heritage, what constitutes a test of possessing such a quotient is often irrelevant to defining the species. They can defy; they can doubt, and be suspicious; anticipate by mere thought or look; and know the scent of danger from miles afar, […]

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Hoarding Hordes

November 23, 2015

As homophones, they are often words confused and confusing, both in usage as well as in application; but it is the perspective by which they are utilized which refines the proper insertion into a grammatically correct context. Thus, the former pertains to volume of items in vast storage supplies, collected for purposes often beyond want or need; while the latter is attributable to the invasion of foreign forces in greater numbers, in overwhelming tides of armies by invasion. History is replete with instances of both, and the present day migration and waves of immigrants world-wide is a testament to that. […]

Postal & Federal Disability Retirement: The Quiet Corridors of Shame

November 19, 2015

“Shame regards the world as virtue delights by advances, whereas the blushing eyes rustle past quietly in the night.” Such adages, at one time or another in the history of words, linguistic battles, and pendulum tensions of behavior accepted and acceptable; moral turpitudes unconcealed and depiction of baseness meaningfully displayed; and so it goes, as standards crumble away and societal scorn diminutively dissipates with each passing day. It was Mark Twain who quipped that Man is the only animal that blushes — or needs to. […]