Filing for OPM Disability Retirement: The Novel Approach

The genre represents the highest form of literature. Poetry possesses its eccentric beauty; the short story its ease of brevity for the reader to pick up and finish in convenience of time, and thus its popularity; the biography and the epistemologically privileged cousin, the autobiography, its authentic historicity; and others by design of self-promotion, as Truman Capote’s “non-fiction novel” (an oxymoron?). But the novel is the king of prose; of a narrative form which allows for many rooms in an endless castle of hidden trap doors and secret galleys full of antiquities and doorways […] Read More …

OPM Medical Retirement: Obligation through Declaration

It is through the vehicle of the declarative statement that obligations are created. Thus, when one states: “I promise…”; “I will…”; “You can count on me…”; and other similar declarations of intent, then the connection between the speaker and the one to whom it is stated, is immediately created, such that a binding sense of mandatory indebtedness is established. In many ways, then, it is through the spoken word, arranged in a pre-established sequence of grammatical form, which constitutes something beyond a mere folly of ideas, […] Read More …

OPM Medical Retirement: Graven Images and Craven Homages

One concerns religious restrictions; the other, human tendencies emanating from deeply rooted psychological fears. Both constitute acts which reflect a trepidation of purpose, and an anthropological study of human frailty. The Commandment against graven images protects one to respect the sanctity of a singular teleological focus; homage by craven impulse, on the other hand, reveals the continuing connection to an enslaved state of mind, albeit one which may merely be emotionally binding and unfettered by physical force or threat of force. […] Read More …

OPM Medical Retirement: The Categorical Imperative

It is, of course, the foundation of Kant’s moral philosophy; of the unconditional call to act in a certain way, accepted and mandated precisely because there is no room for question. But that life were so easy; automatons would simply act in mechanistic ways, driven by moral certitude; free will could be determined by the comforting thought that universal codes of conduct shall always confine and direct. And bureaucracies would always make decisions within a framework of computational algorithms. […] Read More …

Federal & Postal Medical Retirement: Life’s Scarring

It builds through repetition of wounding, or because it is deep, jagged, or otherwise unable to repair through normal processes of cellular regeneration. It remains a mark of a person; over time, fading through exposure to sunlight, disappearance of discoloration, and the slow erasure of the damage done through the healing process of the linear course of a lifetime, may allow for one to forget. […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement and the Demythologization of the Process

Beyond being an ugly word, Spinoza attempted it, but closer to the heart of a flawed hermeneutical approach, the theologian, Rudolf Bultmann spent his career attempting to separate the conceptually inseparable narratives encapsulating historical content, context and the meaning behind miracles and metaphor. All processes are mysterious, until detachedly analyzed, devalued or debunked. Some merely throw up their hands and reject a subject in its entirety; others spend a lifetime in trying to understand it, and thus do cottage industries emerge. […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement Law: Loss of Meaning

What it is that motivates a person to achieve greatness; whether the factor of that which does, or purports to be, and to what extent the outward articulation of the elements of a driving force corresponds with the esoterically objective truth underlying the learned and expected statements for public consumption; these, we may never know. Most of us engage in repetitive monotony of actions; whether by fear of societal retribution, the judgment of peers, a sense of responsibility and obligation; or, perhaps […]

 
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OPM Disability under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset: To Lose a Kite

It is that loss of innocence; of a childhood cut and let go, a bifurcation of sorts, where the fluttering tail fades into the misty distance of time past, eternity unfulfilled, and the present moment shattered by a loss not valued by economic standards, but by the negation of that which was, will never be again, and won’t be coming back. The loss of anything is valued by the attachment of human passion, the trembling fear of future consequences known and yet to be determined, and the expectation of a hope left as a residue of hard work and toil. […]

 
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