Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: The negative of a photograph

In this digital age, the disappearance of the negative in photography is quite appropriate; for, this is an age that has attempted to expunge everything negative, both in form and in substance.  That thin strip of plastic film that was always retained, and carefully coupled with the “positive” prints, was preserved with the idea that the more valued sets of prints may become lost, distributed or otherwise disseminated, and in that event, so long as the negative of the original was retained, more could be printed out. […] Read More …

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Resignation

It is both an act, as well as a demeanor. In the former sense, the fulfillment is accomplished by the actual tendering of an offer to terminate a business or contractual relationship, with a declarative statement of unequivocal certainty. In the latter form, a feeling, a sense of foreboding, and a concession to life’s hardships. In either case, it is an act of withdrawal, whether by action via terminal certitude or in the wasting away of the soul’s inner flame of light. […] 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 Disability Retirement: Plans, purposes and pivoting positions

The first in the series indicates the human endeavor of imagination and creativity, unique sets of binary forecasts projecting into a beautification of one’s future; the second, the qualitative and substantive core which motivates and impels the preceding characteristic and transforms it from mere ethereal musings into a concretized formulation of action; and the final element of the tripartite aggregate represents the capacity and ability of a person to remain adaptable, malleable, ready to take into consideration new data and conform appropriately, such that the originating plan is never abandoned but merely evolved into a pragmatic reflection […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement: Of Tomorrow’s Dreams Delayed

We like to think that our lives progress unencumbered in a linear line of advancement, with nary a bump or an obstacle unconquerable, and but for the occasional exuberance of planned erraticisms, the journey should be a smooth ride without surprises. But just as planes sometimes fall from the sky, and nature betrays its perfection by mistaken errors of comedic turmoil, so the linear aspect of constancy often must confront the bumpiness of expectations. Life rarely turns out as planned, and the more we plan, the less we expect fulfillment. […] Read More …