Medical Retirement under FERS & CSRS: Childhood wishes

We had them; some of us still remember and harbor them like sacrosanct relics of priceless value; and still others know of them and recollect some general idea long forgotten, once delighted in, but now rotting in the vestiges of abandoned buildings hollow but for the frame that haunts in the midnight moon.  Wishes remain throughout one’s life, whether in the stage of adulthood or old age; but it is the childhood wishes one remembers that reveal the empty soul of what one has become, […] 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 …

Postal & Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Of venal and venial injustice

That a single vowel can radically alter the meaning of a word is not surprising; rather, it is the simplicity of the reduction – from one constituting an onerous sense of the corrupt, to a mere insignificance of action – that demarcates the chasm of definitional differences between the two. Both are adjectives; but of the former, often associated with corruption involving bribery and characterized by a mercenary motive, while the latter is of a pardonable offense, minor on a scale of wrongdoings, and merely bordering on the barely noticeable spectrum of sins acknowledged […] Read More …

Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: Masking of Fate

It is still perhaps appropriate at the time of this writing, to consider masks and costumes, as Halloween, or All Hallows’ Eve lingers is just over. It is a celebratory time; and whether of religious significance or origins discovered in the medieval Gaelic folklore long lost but in remaining songs and ballads sung sweetly without instrumentality or electronic mixing, the tradition of putting on a disguise, concealing one’s face with a mask of another’s soul continues. It is doubtful that the meaning behind such traditions are ever discussed or believed in; […] Read More …

Medical Retirement from Federal Government: The whiles of life

While I wait; while I watch; while I listen; while I suffer; these, and many more, are the wiles of life (note the sudden extraction of the “h” in the subtle – or not – alteration by omission). But such a linguistic subterfuge is appropriate, as it connotes a manipulative intention in the very wasting away of life’s gifts. For, indeed, we spend much of our days steeped in inactivity, waiting patiently while life passes by. While I wait in line; while I watch an advertisement; while the kids play; while the dog sniffs; the wiles of waiting, […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement: A break from the quotidian

Is there ever a release from the commonplace? We take it so for granted – those mundane occurrences of daily living – until the greater pain of life’s misgivings overwhelm and supersede. The quotidian is a fancy term for the everyday; that routine which we engage in from the moment our eyes open, the sleepiness is cast aside, and the feet are sheathed into slippers or socks, or perhaps not at all; and all that was just described, as well, constitutes the quotidian. […] Read More …