Federal Employee Disability Retirement: The Habit

No, this is not about that peculiar creature that Tolkien created who used to rule the earth but now hides in little dirt hutches in the deep recesses of forests (don’t all children and adults who have read his works believe in their heart of hearts that Hobbits still exist, and we just don’t see them?); rather, this, too, is a creature of sorts, just not the imaginary creation that gave joy to so many.  How is it that we come to learn it?  Is there a numerical value that must be first ascribed before the regularity of X becomes a Habit-Y?  […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Medical Retirement: The insular world of anger

It must be strange to live in a constant cacophony of anger; of a persistent and unrelenting fire pit, where demons jump from ashen glowering of hot red coals to roaring flames of unceasing rage, and back again and yet for more, ever fuming from the slights and hurts both imagined and real, but never able to escape from the corridors of one’s own making. It is, in the end, an emotion of self-destructive turmoil, perpetrating a defiance of civility in order to engage in the ultimate self-immolation, but without honor or quietude, and thus left with the emptiness of seppuku without meditative resilience. […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Medical Disability Retirement: Language Decoupled

The correspondence theory of truth has long since been abandoned; whether by congruence or of fair representation, the classical model dating back to Plato and Aristotle has been replaced by Wittgenstein‘s description of “language games“, which really possesses no reflection upon the objective world which surrounds us “out there”. With the advent of virtual reality; the blurred distinction between truth and falsity as merely words in play; and Bertrand Russell’s playful destruction of any such theory […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Observing Dogs

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, […] Read More …

Postal & Federal Disability Retirement: The Quiet Corridors of Shame

“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. […] Read More …