OPM Disability Retirement: Reversal of Fortune

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? […] Read More …

Federal & Postal Medical Retirement: Life’s Scarring

It builds through repetition of wounding, or because it is deep, jagged, or otherwise unable to repair through normal processes of cellular regeneration. It remains a mark of a person; over time, fading through exposure to sunlight, disappearance of discoloration, and the slow erasure of the damage done through the healing process of the linear course of a lifetime, may allow for one to forget. […] Read More …

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: It’s a Dog’s Life

Animals are entities we encounter as subjects in a world of objects, but with whom we can have relationships and interactions beyond mere utility; the affection of a dog or similar pet, their importance in one’s life — these are beyond measurable quantification of significance. But there is a difference in the “other” species; of the immediacy of need, the lack of concern for tomorrow, and happiness determined by thoughts of future occurrences or predicted circumstances. […] Read More …

Medical Retirement for Federal Workers: Fear, Anxiety, Loathing and Acting

To “act” can have multiple meanings; one can be engaged in “make believe”, or merely doing something as opposed to talking about it. One can participate in a pretense (“he was putting on an act”); but perhaps engaging in pretense is not dissimilar (forgive the double […] Read More …

CSRS & FERS Medical Disability Retirement: Cognitive Dissonance

In psychology, it is the state of self-contradiction, of holding onto a belief while simultaneously acting in a manner contrary to that belief. If such a contradiction between belief-and-action impacts upon a core, foundational essence, of one which […] Read More …

Federal Worker Disability Retirement: Stress, Anxiety, Depression…

Stress is often the noun which triggers. As the originating causation, it is often considered the evil cousin who brings about other ailments. It is a state of mental or emotional strain which is encountered under extraordinary circumstances, […] Read More …

Federal Employee Medical Retirement: Lives of Trepidation

Most of us live lives of subtle trepidation. Whether borne of childhood experiences of insecurity or fears, psychologists and mental health professionals can perhaps shed some light upon a theory or proposed paradigm of explanatory adequacy. In adulthood, it turns […] Read More …

OPM FERS/CSRS Disability Retirement: That Sense of Doom

It can often be noted in the quivering voice at the other end of the telephone line (or, would it be more accurate to state, in the modern vernacular, at the “other end of the satellite signal”?) — that sense of impending doom that filing for Federal Disability Retirement […] Read More …

Disability Retirement for Federal Government Employees: Confusion & Disarray

A state of confusion and disarray can work in either direction; either the confused state of affairs can lead to a successful outcome (resulting from the inability to make a logically correct decision, but where a favorable outcome may randomly occur); or the state […] Read More …

Early Retirement for Disabled Federal Workers: A Different Process Reality

The “process reality” of filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under either FERS or CSRS is a completely different kind of reality — a parallel universe that continues on regardless […] Read More …