Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: The View from the Balcony of One’s Soul

It can only be in metaphorical terms by which we express such sentiments; and some recent essays have contended that true comprehension within the context of any language game requires, by necessity and tautological argument, metaphors. The concept of one’s “soul” itself may be entirely metaphorical — or a simile of sorts — and placed within the context of the physical terrain of a balcony, the combination of the immaterial with the material presents an image beyond mere fanciful flights of the imagination, […] Read More …

Postal & Federal Disability Retirement: Adrenal Fatigue

One need not be officially diagnosed with Addison’s Disease in order to incur the wrath and ravages of adrenal insufficiency. Life’s multiplicity of compounding and complex stresses; exhaustion beyond merely feeling “run down” or otherwise out of synchronized balance from everyday feelings of adequacy; a sense of profound fatigue, where cognitive dysfunctions develop, and where symptoms of falling asleep at meetings, […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement: The Extrapolated Life

Originating from mathematics, the concept of extrapolation works well within numerical or statistical restrictions, because the inherent precision constrained by present trends versus application to unknown quantities, poses a self-correcting device not otherwise discovered with linguistic flexibility. But what of a person’s life? Most descriptions possess mere “slice of life” indicators. An employment application; information gathered on a background check; security clearances obtained; personal financial statements; a family discussion about an incident which involved a relative; these are all moments in time, partial reflections upon a wider context of a complex life. […] Read More …

Filing for OPM Disability Retirement: The Novel Approach

The genre represents the highest form of literature. Poetry possesses its eccentric beauty; the short story its ease of brevity for the reader to pick up and finish in convenience of time, and thus its popularity; the biography and the epistemologically privileged cousin, the autobiography, its authentic historicity; and others by design of self-promotion, as Truman Capote’s “non-fiction novel” (an oxymoron?). But the novel is the king of prose; of a narrative form which allows for many rooms in an endless castle of hidden trap doors and secret galleys full of antiquities and doorways […] Read More …