Disability Retirement for Federal Employees: Minor pleasures

At what point does the transference occur?  Minor pleasures are those interludes in life that make for everything to become, and remain, worthwhile; sometimes, because of various tumults in our lives, the designation of “minor” becomes altered, and becomes “major” – like the dream fulfilled of that kid who toiled in the minor leagues for so many years and finally got his big break by being called up to the majors. […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement under FERS & CSRS: DDD

It is what Moynihan said so many years ago, of constantly reinterpreting normative constructs such that the subtle, insidious reduction of acceptance allows for normalization of that which was rejected and repugnant just a few years before, a generation ago, or never at all.  Or, it may refer to a medical condition of the spine – of the condition identified as “degenerative disc disease”; but in either case, the acronym used as a convenient route for linguistic economy has some similarities involved. […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement Benefits: Sign Posts

Whether used as a noun or a verb, the second grammatical appendage can have multiple meanings: as a stick of lumber; as an activity placing information, warning, directional declarative or similar linguistic affirmations; and the combination of the two words can be read only within a greater contextual enlightenment depending upon what meaning is meant to be conveyed or how the inflection and accent is emphasized. […] Read More …

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 …

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Distractions

They are the projects of life of which Heidegger recognizes, allowing for avoiding the inevitabilities of life’s challenges; of fate, mortality, future insecurity, and death.  What quantifiable slice of one’s life is governed by distractions?  Must it always be less than 50% in order to remain so, and if it exceeds that halfway point, does it then become something substantive and not merely the peripheral meaning of what it means to “be distracted”?  If a distraction is considered to be an aside – that which waylays a person’s attention by focusing upon […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Moving on

That is what people want to do, and in the aggregate, the world around. In engagements with others, there is a limited and quantifiable extent of patience. It is tantamount to that ‘arc of flight’ that every animal possesses – as long as you remain outside of that safe-zone, you will be a suspicious entity perceived by watchful caution; once you enter and breach the invisible periphery of an unseen arena, […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Coordinating the efforts

The amazement of tandem coordination is discovered in various corners of Nature – of tentacles of an octopus seemingly working without the complexity of entanglement; of an eagle’s capture in mid-flight of its prey, where the claws and wings attack and devour with perfect harmony; and in modernity, the capacity and ability to “multi-task”, as the parlance of efficiency has been noted. The human animal is a formidable creature – perhaps not the best at any one thing (speed is set by the Cheetah; endurance, in the Wolf’s persistence; but of competence in all areas, the two-legged, vertical organism sets the standard for excellence), but able to compensate for deficiencies by exerting acceptable levels of efficiency in many. […] Read More …

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Preparing for more than a ‘maybe’

We never engage a project with just a ‘maybe’; to do so is to invite a preemptive failure, of sorts. On the other hand, there are rarely any guarantees in life; just as the victims of Madoff and other historical figures of thievery; a ‘sure thing’ is rarely that, and more likely its counterintuitive opposite. Chances and opportunities of a lifetime, of course, are touted as ‘maybes’ that should be considered. Those stories abound of youthful vigor in the parent’s basement tinkering with innovations that will alter the future course of technology and mechanized futuristic inventions; […] Read More …

OPM Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: The Reconsideration Stage

Much time is often wasted upon rebutting incoherent arguments. Such a statement is true in a great many sectors of life, as well as with an initial denial received from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. The first reaction in response to an Initial Denial received from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is to panic and become disheartened: The Federal Disability Retirement applicant has waited many, many months, just to get to this point of being denied an application which was thought to clearly meet the legal standard of preponderance of the evidence, and perhaps the medical narratives and treatment records clearly and unequivocally established the nexus between one’s medical condition and the essential elements of one’s job. […] Read More …

Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: Leaving that legacy behind

We hear about it from ‘high-end achievers’; and every President now builds large temples to themselves, like some Greek gods with immortal canopies and call them “libraries” for the common minion to think that it is like those warm and fuzzy buildings we once visited in order to escape the ravages of our sordid childhoods. Perhaps it is the realization of that which has come back to haunt us: Darwinism, pure materialism, and the abandonment of faith in hobbits, gnomes and angels from beyond, that leaves us with the stark nakedness of our own mortality, and the need to fulfill that vacancy by building lasting memorials that only crumble with the decadence of time. […] Read More …