Medical Retirement from Federal Service: Tarnished lives

These days, are there any other kinds?  Do saints exist, or is it merely time which erases the stench attached, and as history is recorded and memorialized by sympathetic co-conspirators attempting to preserve the sanctity of reputations and disregarding the detritus of humanity, so once the sanctification by pontifical decree settles upon a figure previously considered human, and now an idealized version of an individual lost in the complex historicity of biographical omissions, the tarnished perspective of lives once lived has disappeared into the ethereal universe of a surreal reality. […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement: The mortality reminder

When does mortality become a concern? Certainly, not during the youthful vigor when the future holds bright concurrent with the cellular construct yet expanding and multiplying. Is it with the first encounter that reveals vulnerability? And what is defined as a “healthy” sense of it, as opposed to an obsessive conduit to a dementia of nihilism? Does a “close shave” necessarily haunt everyone, or does it matter as to the sensitivity of a soul that such karma encounters? What “reminds” one of a future terminal, as opposed to becoming an all-consuming journey to avoid the ultimate consequence? […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement: Benefitting from doubt

What does it mean to “give” one the “benefit of doubt”? Is it something that is granted automatically, or must one “earn it” through labor, circumstances or sheer luck? What are the elements that lead to it, and why are some people accorded such grace while others are treated with impunity of disregard?

Take the following hypothetical: You are at a party with friends and acquaintances; you sit with a number of people, and among them are a very close friend and confidante, as well as a mixture of those whom you somewhat dislike and otherwise consider an “undesirable” of sorts. Well, let’s be honest – you despise especially this one person, and hope daily that that individual will die a horrible death […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement Benefits: The reef beneath the lagoon’s surface

In every worthwhile venture, there is the inherent danger of failure, and more often, of encounters with obstacles while enduring the process.  Some are apparent; others, hidden like the reef beneath the lagoon’s surface, of the jagged formations from sediments deposited and coagulated through time and shifting tectonics of unseen tidal forces.  That is the greatest of dangers […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement from OPM: The key

It is both a tool of utility in order to gain entrance and accessibility to an otherwise abrupt encounter with an obstacle barring further forward progress, as well as a well-worn metaphor appropriately applied to miracles, magic and moments of mandatory martyrdom. It is a wonder that a slight defect in the metallic shaving of the implement can allow for the turning of it, and opening into the entranceway, but for that additional indentation; or of a barcode smudged which refuses to make an allowance. In either case, whether as a physical tool or an electronic pass embedded in the plastic sheen of society’s muse, what it opens is the foundation for its very existence. […] Read More …

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: The perfection of nothingness

The advantage of nothingness over the clutter of everything is that the former – despite lacking any characteristic of anything concrete, or perhaps because of it – retains and reflects an aura of perfection. It is perhaps a puzzle to consider perfection in that which represents vacuity, but think about it: It is the figment and filament of negation which can represent the penultimate artifice of unsullied brightness; everything that is in being, can be found fault with, but nothing that exists cannot be prosecuted for imperfection. […] Read More …