CSRS & FERS Medical Retirement: The chronic life

The chronic life is the one that burdens; and, yet, does not all of life present a challenge of burdensome trials and persistent provocations?  Or, are there elements within one’s life that makes it feel as if we are merely the donkey for others to place their weight upon, like those pack animals of yesteryears that always looked forlorn and ready to collapse? […] Read More …

Federal Employee Medical Retirement Benefits: The Diary

Many begin the process at an early age, then abandon it with little remorse or afterthought, as a worthless project discarded for want of inherent value; and when, years and even decades later, it is discovered behind a bureau or a secret cubbyhole where trinkets and memorabilia retaining an eternal aura of privately precious remembrances are stored away, we shriek with joy as if the lottery had been won, a proposal has been declared, or a camouflaged vault containing the mysteries of gemstones […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement: The U.S. Department of Health & Human Sacrifice

Does modernity reflect progress? And, more to the point, by whose definition do we apply the standard of “progress”? Does mere movement or change constitute advancement, or do we fool ourselves by the proverbial content of shuffling the chairs on the deck of a sinking ship? Each generation believes fervently that the previous one represents an archaic mode of static thought and stale fashions, and that youth itself somehow supersedes the necessity for any generational transfer of wisdom or insight. […] Read More …

Federal & Postal Medical Disability Retirement: Vultures the world ’round

Despite what they do, some find them to be elegance in flight; and whether the encounter is in the New World or Old, their bald heads mark them out to be the focus of fascination, repulsion and avoidance of shuddering whispers.  Scavengers upon carrion of dead carcasses, the full display of their baldness and redness marks them for a discriminated species. […] Read More …