Early Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: The Gatekeeper

Garbage in, garbage out; leave the door wide open, and the flies come in; “we don’t live in a barn”; and other similar quips, quotes and quotidian truths abound to guide us throughout the day. In Medieval times, the Gatekeeper held a prominent position of authority and safekeeping; trust was of paramount importance, and the potential for bribery to undermine loyalty and fealty to the inhabitants of the Court or Castle meant that treatment of the assigned individual demanded respect as well as adequate renumeration. […] Read More …

OPM Accepted Disabling Conditions: Suicidal Ideations

It is perhaps the final vestige of societal taboo; for, at what point the human animal realized that self-destruction became an option is open for debate. In the Animal Kingdom, it is rare to find species openly seeking to end life; the struggle to survive and the Darwinian inherency for self-preservation and survival remains as vibrant as ever. Being diagnosed with “suicidal ideation” is normally associated with psychiatric conditions of Major Depression and Generalized Anxiety, where the acceptable level of stress-tolerance exceeds the capacity to withstand. […] Read More …

Federal and Postal Disability Retirement: Choosing Battles

Human Resources departments within agencies are set up in order to perform a multitude of services for the employees who comprise the agency itself, and to that extent, the originating idea which constitutes the founding purpose is a noble one. For whatever reason, however, the foundational principles in the course of an evolving department will often get muddled and lost; the driving principle behind a concept merely gets in the way of a paycheck; the employees for whom the department was founded become the “problem” and an adversarial relationship between the H.R. Department and its employees arises.
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Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Life Choices

We all have to make them; and though we may alternatively want to curl up into a fetal position and wish the blunt world to stop bothering us, the decisions we make, and take responsibility for, reflect the state of maturity which binds us to age, experience and level of moral maturity. It is, to a great extent, a superficial and shallow connotation and reference point; for, as the inevitability of choices to be made result from living in circumstances of our own making, so to imply that there is anything “substantive” in speaking about them undermines the very relevance of implication itself. […] Read More …

Federal Medical Retirement: The Other Side of Darkness…

Darkness can take many forms; of the physical omission of light, the loss of visual capacity, or the mood of a person within the context of modernity, complexity and loss of moral intransigence.  Light provides the energy of life, and when that core vibrancy is sapped and depleted by either or all of the sources of light, then darkness prevails.  Once extinguished, the last remaining flicker persists only through sheer self-determination, a plan for future reigniting, or the delicate cherishing of a hope still unforeseen.[…] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Devising Escape Routes

What a person spends his or her time doing away from work, reveals much as to how one’s work will be accomplished. If one attempts immediately to build protective walls around the core of a project in an effort to stave off potential marauders, as opposed to focusing upon the substantive essence of the idea itself, then perhaps the vulnerability of the project itself will begin to manifest. Our own fears often overwhelm; but healthy fear can be a positive use of an evolutionary tool meant to apprise and alert. […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement Benefits: Shame

Anthropological commentators have variously pointed out that the human being is the only one of the social animals to exhibit the characteristic of shame, and then quip with a spirit of mocking sharpness, “and the only ones who have a need to be”. But the problem of shame is that the responsiveness exhibiting that overwhelming sense of self-immolation is often misdirected. Shame, or being ashamed, can occur resulting from the collective behavior of others, where a majority opinion can persuade through ostracizing, manifesting group hostility, or through persistent hammering. It can even be through the misinterpretation of the normative behavior and conduct of acceptable societal customs and social rules of engagement. […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement: The Alliteration of Life

Cathartic calamities caused creatively cannot cooperatively contain characteristic contents clearly coordinated contumaciously. Sometimes, the insistence upon form can result in the nonsensical loss of clarity in substance; life often reflects the absurdities we establish by convention and societal imposition, and we pay the price for it. Life is like being a letter in a series of alliterative words; we are helpless in being attached, but cannot dissociate ourselves, separate one’s self, or otherwise excise the offending aspect. We are forever wedded like the proverbial two peas in a pod, […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement Lawyer: Preemptive Actions

Knowledge can be a dangerous commodity; partial, or little knowledge, can be all the more damaging, precisely because actions can result based upon incomplete information and slices of factually curtailed composites. The Court of the Appeals for the Federal Circuit has previously pointed out one of the methodological deficiencies engaged in by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, in its review and determination of Federal Disability Retirement cases: of focusing upon that which is not included in a Federal Disability Retirement application, as opposed to reviewing the information of what has been received. […] Read More …