OPM Medical Retirement: Consistency

For over twelve years, the lack of intervening language contradicting the narrative as put forth by the NBC news anchor allowed for an intended image to prevail; it was only when language from other sources began to intersect, and to refute or otherwise unravel, the factual underpinnings as propounded by the individual, that retractions, admissions and apologies had to be declared and conveyed. But for those other intervening statements, the language game as played by the news anchor would have continued to dominate, and history would have been remained unquestioned. […] Read More …

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Self-predication

Some people are uncomfortable in doing it; others relish the repetitive self-reference, enjoying the first-person attribution and the incessant pronouncement of the personal pronoun, the centrality of dramatic characterization every time the “I” is inserted; throughout, everyone recognizes that the identification of the “I” can never be fully expunged despite a heightened level of modesty or humility. […]

 
Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement: Indexicals

It is indeed the specific context of a situation which provides for referential data giving individualized meaning to a case. But for Federal Disability Retirement cases, the unique contextual information concerning where, by whom, in what timeframe, may be perfectly allowable in a “for instance” or “for example” type of descriptive enhancement, but ultimately what the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is looking for is the example which represents a medical condition or symptom thereof that is chronic, is of consistent duration, and which is not merely a singular event. […] Read More …

OPM Disability Application Forms: SF 3112A and the Pathway through the Bureaucracy

Bureaucracy and creativity are conceptual opposites, rarely spoken in the same sentence, and never compatible, representing always a contrast in self-contradictory terms.  For, it is the former which implies the negation of the latter, or the stamping out of any hint of the former’s influence  […] Read More …

SF 3112A

OPM Standard Form 3112A: Applicant’s Statement of Disability:
The constraint of a standardized form, by its very appearance, is itself a self-evident anomaly of conformity; forms, by the very nature of their format, constrains and delimits the ability to respond. Space is limited, and it is intended to be that way. By mandating the completion of specific forms in an uniform, consistent, and universally standardized approach, the applicant who must complete the form must by necessity conform to the regulated approach. […] Read More …

CSRS & FERS Medical Disability Retirement: The Narrative & the Audience

Anton Chekhov’s short story, “Grief”, is often accompanied by a subtitle, variously interpreted as, “To whom shall I share my grief?” It is both about the need inherent in human nature to tell one’s story of grief, as well as the cold, unreceptive world which has no time […] Read More …

Early Medical Retirement for Disabled Federal Workers: Accuracy & Creativity

Accuracy and creativity are not mutually exclusive approaches; one often thinks that the former relates to more ‘technical’, non-fiction genres, while the latter encompasses the areas […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement: The Autobiographical Slice

Every story is unique. Uniqueness is a characteristic of each human life story, precisely because there are no two sets of facts which are identical. Assuming that parallel universes do not exist, […] Read More …

Federal and Postal Disability Retirement: The Genre of the Narrative

Different genres purportedly possess internal mechanisms and tools of the trade which distinguish one art form from another; thus, fiction writers use various forms which, in the eyes of the […] Read More …