OPM Disability Retirement: Human & humane activity

Does the dropping of the single vowel make a difference?  Should it?  Or, should the very status of being “human” encompass and naturally include being “humane”, as well?  Should they not be synonyms, or even indistinguishable as an amalgamation of vowels and consonants, as opposed to two distinct words, even if one is considered as a mere extension of the other?  […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement under FERS & CSRS: Life erasing

In youth and early adulthood, we add; in later years, life erases.  Kids grow up and move elsewhere; vigor depletes; living spaces are downsized; mementoes once meaningful are discarded into a trash heap of forgotten memories; and health deteriorates, with diminution of lives by incremental depreciation both in appearance, worth and human value. […] Read More …

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: The persistent tinnitus of life

The root word that contains a valid diagnosis of a medical condition, sometimes comes about gradually, others at a persistent rate of uncommon urgency; and whether by emanation of a serious, primary condition such as Meniere’s Disease, a brain tumor or cardiac elements impacting upon the heart or blood vessels, or mere residuals from a short-lived ear infection, the low, persistent ringing can interrupt and disrupt focus, concentration, attention to detail, and lead to depression, anxiety and panic […] Read More …

Medical Retirement from Civil Service: Envy without hope

Can a footman in former times, or a scullery maid while scrubbing the floors, experience envy when class structures forbade any hope of advancing beyond?  In days before of rigid demarcations of social and class differentiations, where terms in modernity like “upward mobility” or “moving up the ladder” (have you ever wondered at the condescending connotation of such terms, where “up” is the direction of the movement, as if one were ascending to the heavens, even when such barometric activity often corresponded to moral degradation and sacrifice of one’s character?) were unheard of, […] Read More …

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Overload

The comparative life is an illusion of sorts; Plato’s theme throughout is established every day, as appearances hide the reality beneath, and the allegory of the Cave – where shadows constitute the seeming truth and the truth appears as hidden seeming – is merely an archaic anachronism that has been vanquished, if merely because no one gives much weight to dead philosophers and nobody has the time for reflection upon questions that cannot provide answers instantaneously, as Google and High Speed Internet have allowed us to become accustomed. […] Read More …

Disability Retirement from Federal Government Employment: Imprisoned souls

Do we immediately know of the figurative sense of such a concept?  As the Medieval times of dark, dank and dire dungeons no longer house the tortured detritus of human excrement cast aside upon the nod of displeasure noted by a King, a Prince or a scorned Court of Royal Courtier, so the immediate presumption is that such a term must encompass some cognitive obstacle or encircling of a mind otherwise in agony.  And what of the second term in the concept – does it denote something separate and apart from the whole of a human figure […] Read More …

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: Comfort in regularity

We thrive and relish in it, despite our protestations to the contrary; and while most of us utter monologues denouncing the boredom of imposed seclusion, and for fleeting moments envy the adventurer, the person constantly living “on the edge”, and that proverbial black sheep who seems to wander from aimless job to dead-end ones, the majority of the population […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Trading places

Long before the 2008 debacle of economic turmoil; preceding epic movies following, of the lavish ineptitude of miscreants awash in money’s sale of souls in exchange for the temporal pleasures of limitless fantasies; when laughter could be heard yet, because the future still held some hope, there was a movie by the same title. […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement from OPM: The key

It is both a tool of utility in order to gain entrance and accessibility to an otherwise abrupt encounter with an obstacle barring further forward progress, as well as a well-worn metaphor appropriately applied to miracles, magic and moments of mandatory martyrdom. It is a wonder that a slight defect in the metallic shaving of the implement can allow for the turning of it, and opening into the entranceway, but for that additional indentation; or of a barcode smudged which refuses to make an allowance. In either case, whether as a physical tool or an electronic pass embedded in the plastic sheen of society’s muse, what it opens is the foundation for its very existence. […] Read More …