Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: The protective comfort of fatalism

There is some comfort in a perspective that is resigned to pre-determinism; for, if nothing can be changed, whatever we do in life is what would have happened anyway, and there is no changing it no matter how much we may try. Fate is thus out of our hands; destiny is designed by forces unknown or beyond our comprehension; and the future cannot be influenced by our petty deeds or attempts to deviate. Taken to the extreme, we are who we are and what we do, how we think and where we end up is purely a matter of fate. […] Read More …

OPM Medical Retirement: Days of Sisyphean Drudgery

The Myth of Sisyphus is well known, both because of the philosophical essay written by Camus, as well as through the Greek mythological narrative of the condemned figure to toil in endless meaninglessness, by rolling the boulder up the hill, only to watch it go down, and to repeat the process all over again. For Camus and the existentialist viewpoint, it is in the very act of absurdity itself that meaning and significance can be derived; for the Greek citizen of yesteryear, it was perhaps the circularity of the human condition which provided for relevance in the telling of the myth. […] Read More …

Postal and Federal Disability Retirement: Last Minute Filings

Waiting until the very last moment in order to file a Federal Disability Retirement application is often an inevitable reflection of the medical condition itself; whether because the thought and act of filing contributes to the exacerbation of one’s condition, or because the […] Read More …

Federal and Postal Disability Retirement: The Balance Tipper

Life requires a series of fine tuning and adjustments; of the balance between work and leisure; when children arrive, of determining priorities, of managing time and recognizing that the things which seemed important to us previously, need to take on a lesser role; of allowing […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement: The Problem of Perhaps

Perhaps it is time to approach the problem from a different perspective; perhaps it is not. We often engage in games of self-delusions, of allowing words of self-justification to interfere with sequential and linear lines of thinking, in order to bypass the harsh reality […] Read More …

OPM FERS/CSRS Disability Retirement: The Time is Now

Waiting for the perfect storm is always the most persuasive grounds for procrastination; that time where coalescence of all necessary factors come together to provide the optimal moment to do something, but which never arrives; and so there is always one issue […] Read More …

Disability Retirement for Federal Workers: Substantive Interlude

An interlude is meant to provide an intervening period of change in order for the transition from one part of an event (e.g., a play or a musical piece, etc.) to another will occur without confusion. It is likened to a grammatical comma or a semicolon. But if the interlude […] Read More …

Federal Employee Medical Retirement: The Process of Decision-making

It is both informative and interesting to observe various personalities in the thought-process of decision-making. Some will merely be silent and ponder for hours, days, and weeks (or longer), as if time alone with resolve an issue; others will be proactive and aggressively […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement: Early Decisions, Later Consequences

Decisions engaged in early on, reap later consequences which often reflect the choices made in those initial steps. This is true both in life generally, and in particularized ventures, endeavors and vocations. That is precisely why we tell our kids to study hard; […] Read More …

Federal and Postal Disability Retirement: Weeds in Our Lives

Weeds are irritants. Ecologically, they contain erosion and the loss of soil; but in the suburban paradigm of our lives, they represent the unruliness in an otherwise pristine and antiseptic […] Read More …