OPM Medical Retirement: Between balance and perspective

Between the two is a chasm often unnoticed, where the preface to either and both may be a skewed outlook or a myopic view of an issue, a trope of a trolley of hardships gone uncontrollably berserk; and once a person “gets over” the emotional turmoil of a reaction steeped in feelings, sensibilities and angst, then a certain condemnation of “balance” may arise, which then allows for a different “perspective” to develop.  Balance is often thought to come after perspective, […] Read More …

Disability Retirement from Working with the Federal Government: Originality

It is a frightening word; for, it is what we all strive for, yet almost always fall short, fail or attempt to justify and obfuscate for not quite reaching that goal.  Fortunately, there are at least two, but likely an infinite number of, avenues of avoidance in being charged with its lack:  First, and fortunately, plagiarism is not a criminal offense and, moreover, no one really seems to care except in the most egregious of instances, and furthermore, for those professing to be constrained by Catholic orthodoxy, it isn’t even a venial sin, let alone a mortal one. […] Read More …

OPM Federal Employee Disability Retirement: A traveler’s perspective

How is it that a tourist can see the same building which local people pass by every day, as something of an attraction worthy of encapsulating and embalming for posterity’s sake, with a click of the camera? What is it about the eye of the traveler which is different from the staid repetitiveness of the citizen occupying for decades, centuries, and eons long forgotten, which challenges the uniqueness of stability and contrasts it as against the unwanted forces of change? Like tectonic shifts, mass migrations armed with Smartphones […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Medical Retirement: The things we leave for repair

What we attend to immediately; that which we procrastinate, and set aside; and, finally, the things we allow to falter, to deteriorate in a progressive decline of disrepair — slowly eroding, perceptibly corroding, a sight for sore eyes, as the proverbial adage goes. And what if it is ourselves? Of course, the cosmetic and physical fitness industry have cornered the market and turned selfishness into a virtue, and self-love into a cottage industry; something akin to, “If you don’t love yourself, how can you love others?” (or some such parallel inanity of vacuous nonsense as that); or even a better one: Persuade the populace to eat more sugars and processed food, then blame them for nationwide obesity […] Read More …

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: The mere asking of a question

In modernity, the asking of the question in itself raises a suspicion. Being curious no longer kills the cat in some obscure, proverbial manner; to inquire immediately brands the individual and categorizes the questioner based upon the query of conventional consciousness. Thus is debate of any kind quelled; for, to engage in a dialectical process requires a prefatory landscape of imaginative fertility; but in an atmosphere of poison and shallow interests already consecrated, there can be no classic form of “give-and-take”, of a level of intellectual inquiry required for the pursuance of excellence, improvement or uncanonized thought processes. […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: The implication of ‘finding happiness’

Human beings live in a duality of universes; within the linear historicity of an objective world, daily unfolding with encounters with physical objects and other beings, comprised of interactions both superficial and intimate, combined with utilization of inanimate constructs for daily living; then, there is the insular universe of a parallel phenomena, where we are subsumed by a conceptual menagerie of language, numbers, extrapolated forms of ideas and strings of thought processes; and how we coordinate and intersect the two determines the success or failure of who we are, how we thrive and to what teleological end we pursue. […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Of the Charmed, Charted or Chartered Life

Of the troika of possibilities presented, the first is rarely available or even an option, if by a “charmed life” is defined as one where wealth is never a restrictive element, potentiality is ever compensated by unlimited resource, and freedom to choose — whether an unproductive, leisurely lifestyle or one which mixes pleasure with some semblance of “doing something” — is but a whim of desire and utterance of a command. Few of us have this option. As for the second — of a charted life, where cultural conventions, societal norms and limited possibilities structurally imposed by birth, circumstance and family lineage […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Of consideration and comity

The singular identifiable factor that destroys is the very reflection which elevates; for, it is power which undermines the source of comity. With it is accompanied the shedding of a need for appearances; that which genuinely festers beneath the surface can bubble up into the tyrant which we all can become, and of that which we suppress and repress throughout our miserable lives. Why does “winning the lottery”, in whatever proverbial form that can take, destroy lives, divide marriages and deconstruct lifelong friendships? Read More …

Medical Separation & Retirement from Federal Government Employment: The Architect of Awe

There are murals of inspired souls, touched by a hand guided by forces unknown; of vaulted ceilings and high arches, and mosaics which are crafted, painted and tediously combined; and as one approaches such architectural wonders, the eyes are lifted upwards toward the heavens in such a natural order of elevation that there is no pause for self-consciousness. Contrast that to the technology of modernity, where huddled masses with sauntering forms and stooped shoulders look down upon the glare of Smartphones, […] Read More …

Medical Retirement from Government Employment: The Daily Diatribe

This is an angry time. Contrary to the appearance of sophistication and quiet aplomb conveyed by shoulders shrugged and ignorance attributable, the festering anger which forms a quaking (or quacking?) undercurrent, like shifting undersea tectonics just before a major earthquake which then results in a tsunami, the fact is that the fragile threads of common courtesy and conventional manners have disappeared over time, in increments of eroded concerns, likened to the moth which remained hidden in the darkness of a closeted space, eating away quietly at the fine costumes of societal consternation. […] Read More …