FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Little battles fought

It is the minor skirmishes of life that maintain the vitality of everyday existence; they are fought in preparation for the greater battles and campaigns.  That is why a ‘strategy’ is important; otherwise, taking the same hill countless times in a day leads one to wonder what the greater plan is.  For, futility and the sense of meaninglessness are what defeat any motivation to continue. […] Read More …

Federal Employment Early Medical Retirement: That state of cognitive dissonance

For all other species, even a momentary state of unawareness can mean death. Predators seek the narrow window of advantage; that is the evolutionary determinism which propagates death, and shows mercy of life for those who close all such seams of opportunities; or so the Darwinian theory goes. Man possesses a peculiar capacity to become lost in thought; whether in daydreaming, deep in slumber; contemplation amidst conceptual constructs of word pictures dancing before one’s eyes; we can walk in a funk or a daze, and drive long distances on super highways and at the end of the trip, not recall a single moment of how we got there. […] Read More …

Disability Retirement from Federal Government Employment: The Well-Digger’s Daughter

It is a French film directed by Daniel Auteuil, and depicts an age just before, during, and after the First World War, when rural life still embraced a contempt for modern values, and the pastoral context defined the the quietude of family life yet unblemished but for private shame of family secrets. It is in the title itself which reveals much; for, there is no independence of a person’s name, and the underlying theme throughout encapsulates the right to a surname, the identity of an individual, and how the interconnectedness of one’s essence, being and substantive community is itself defined by the proper ascription of who we are related to, how, and by what legitimacy. […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement: The traveling troubadour and trobairitz

There are vocations and careers which once were, and now forgotten. Life cycles in endless streams of dying embers and regeneration of growth; and like the mythical Phoenix which arises from the ashes of destruction, so we tend to romanticize that which once was, is now forever lost in the forgotten residues of concealed fingerprints in timeless memories once secluded but dissipated as storytellers no longer found an audience for tales left untold, and children turned to self-amusement with videos, technological blank stares, and smartphones which glow well into the night. […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Pipe Dreams

The origin denotes an unsavory history of imperialistic exploitation and deserved degeneration of culturally unseen and unforetold consequences; of an encounter between foreign soils bridged by greed, necessity and inevitable destinies, but where the conqueror reaped more than what it sought. In the opium dens which followed and the devastation of addictions ensuing, the phantoms derived from the processing of a plant which otherwise concealed the deadliness of its essence, beautiful in its floral toxicity amidst the sweet aroma that diffusely pervaded an unsuspecting population — dreams, indeed, of unreachable heights and great expectations otherwise squandered. […] Read More …