Federal Disability Retirement: Just another bystander

There are primary characters, ancillary or peripheral personalities – and just another bystander.  Similarly, in personal relationships taken from a subjective “I” viewpoint, there are “close family members” (i.e., normally identified as the core within a nuclear family), “extended family”,  […] Read More …

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: The centrality of fringe

In whatever definition one wants to adopt, the meaning is clear: It is that which is on the outer periphery, and not central to the essence recognized. But what if the reversal occurs? Can that even be imagined? Can the fringe constitute a substantive centrality, and yet retain the stability of its essence? And, once the mirror conversion occurs, does the identification remain as it was, or do we accept the fringe elements as the convention, and the formerly known staid components as outside the normative foundations of an acceptable core? […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Superiority in light of misfortune

Why is it that we delight in the misfortune of others? Is it a perversity of defective character, like a genetic malformation of deviancy magnified by exponential proportions within the essence of man? Or, is it that, by comparative analysis and contrasting the parallel states of being, we can elevate our own estimation of worth by pointing to the relative denigration of our neighbor? Certainly, we proffer the words of appropriate opprobrium; “I feel badly for X”; “I get no joy out of hearing that,” and similarly innocuous statements of hypocritical emptiness. […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement: A Pedigree of Choices

There are still some parts in the world where line of descent and lineage of genealogy matter; certainly, for spectacles such as the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, the origins of breeding, the line of winners, and the genetically pure tree of aristocratic connections matter still. But humans are different; or so we like to think. We are repulsed by the very idea of placing substantive significance upon birth rights, yet we fawn all over royal births and deaths; […] Read More …