Medical Retirement under FERS & CSRS: Reference points

They are the connections by which a society maintains a fabric of commonality, whether by myths, narrations of stories handed down, religious knowledge or books and movies.  It used to be that the “Good Book” was the mainstay of the reference points, so that when a person referred to having “eaten the apple”, for a simple example, one immediately knew that the reference points between a sin committed […] Read More …

Disability Retirement under FERS & CSRS: The character of each day

What does the day bring?  Do we awaken, put our finger up to the winds of time or the breeze of the day and ask that question before getting up, dressing and opening the door into a world beyond that may or may not fulfill the promises we believe to be granted?  Or, regardless of the indications, the barometers that forewarn or the compass that fails to direct, do we nevertheless move forward and tackle the challenges faced or otherwise deliberately and willfully avoid? […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement: Chaldean and Pythagorean Numerology

Is it a submission to determinism, or is there some hint of validity other than a self-fulfilling prophesy?  Can names, dates and events be translated into a numerical construct such that predictability of one’s future can be ascertained?  The differences between the two are apparently substantive; the algorithms and numbered “personalities” are altered when the spectrum of equations (1 through 8 under the Chaldean system, and the addition of the next number in sequence under the Pythagorean methodology); […] Read More …

FERS Disability Retirement: The mistakes we all make

There are those who make it their life’s goal not to have remorse for decisions made; but is that truly a worthwhile achievement?  At the end of it all, is there a special space on the unwritten tombstone that lists the mistakes avoided, the embarrassments averted, and the admissions of deficiencies concealed?  […] Read More …

Federal Employee Disability Retirement under FERS or CSRS: Junkyards

It is the latter in the compound word which is left forgotten and unnoticed, precisely because of the screaming blare represented by the former, demanding attention by the sheer nature and character of its breaching sensibilities, like the spoiled cousin refusing to abide by the conventions imposed upon uninvited visitors and customs curtailing unwanted guests. Once, before time forgotten and memories untarnished, the landscape was perhaps a pasture green with wildflowers and vegetation overgrown; then, a possessor who perhaps put up a fence to demarcate the beauty […] Read More …

Early Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: Magic extinguished

Once, we were all children. Of dreams once entertained, and roles of play-acting embraced; when once lines between reality and fantasy blurred like the fireflies burning brightly against the midnight sky, only to disappear and reappear, then fade into the quietude of dawn’s inevitable encroachment; and we, like fairies and angels on wings of carefree butterflies, wrapped in colors unimaginable but for unfettered naiveness and fenceless pastures of creativity, ran through the fields of time unconcerned with the worries and tumults of adulthood and the withering trials of timeless eternity which one day, not long hence, would come to gather up the faces of consternation, because we had to “grow up”. […] Read More …

Federal Government Disability Retirement: The Best of Mediocrity

There is an overriding principle that, where excellence is sought, higher expectations are exceeded.  Acceptance of a given human condition and resignation to that which is less than the best, is to embrace the heart of banality and to reject that august status reserved for the human species, of being above the animals and just below the angels. […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement Lawyer: The Ballerina’s Pirouette

It is an awkward word to pronounce, and even more difficult to perform; but a full turn of the body on one’s toe or the ball of one’s foot, multiplied at dizzying speed while the world remains still or aghast with onlookers of disbelief, is but a day’s work for the stage performer. Practice makes perfect, and the time, energy, pain and history of falls and mistakes preceding a single performance before an audience anticipating unsteady bouts of dizzying falls, where simple tasks of walking or standing are the only points of contextual reference and understanding, […] Read More …