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 Disability Retirement: Conversation of one

Are we the only species which engages in it? Do we ever see a dog standing aside and participating in such a phenomena? Or a cardinal pausing in its morning melody of exuberant sing-song in order to address a non-existent other? And, it isn’t even an artifice or convention for which the actor is being paid, as in an “aside” or a “soliloquy” where private thoughts are spoken aloud for the benefit of the audience, but where others in the drama act “as if” such thoughts are unspoken and shared not. […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: The complexity of human experience

We take for granted much, and dismiss with careless appreciation the residue of crumbs begotten. The idiom that refers to the final straw which breaks a camel’s back — why does the foreign species have an impact upon a culture which is unfamiliar with such a beast of burden? Is it that, despite the images produced against the background of pyramids and pharaohs of a bygone civilization, the essence and theme of the proverbial statement resonates, whether replaced by a horse, a donkey or an ox? […] Read More …

OPM Medical Retirement Benefits: Book Review

Generally, this blog does not review books; however, exceptional works may prompt exceptions to the general order of things, where relevance of subject and beauty of personality may coalesce to consider a slight change of venue. The work itself will neither become a masterpiece nor a conversation focus beyond a generation or two, as the world it describes is quickly fading into the sunset of eccentricity and scarcity of understanding. Tim Sultan’s book (and from the jacket cover, it appears to be his first one at that), Sunny’s Nights, is a mixture of reportage, love of character and annotation of provincial myth. […] Read More …

OPM Medical Retirement: The reservoir of vitriol

Do you ever wonder at the seemingly inexhaustible volume of time people spend on expending and expiating their reserve of malice, hatred and sheer meanness of being? Time and energy spent on gossiping about others; of planning conspiratorial devices to undermine fellow coworkers, or to initiate harassing administrative sanctions and bureaucratic snafus in order to make life tougher, more miserable and uncomfortable for someone else. […] Read More …