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 …

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Of human frailty

Youth is the folly that disbelieves; middle age, of a progressive realization that the past does not lie, but teaches us of existent graveyards we may have passed unnoticed just yesterday, with question suddenly more prominent about mortality, the afterlife, and whether it is possible to cheat illness, […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Moving on

That is what people want to do, and in the aggregate, the world around. In engagements with others, there is a limited and quantifiable extent of patience. It is tantamount to that ‘arc of flight’ that every animal possesses – as long as you remain outside of that safe-zone, you will be a suspicious entity perceived by watchful caution; once you enter and breach the invisible periphery of an unseen arena, […] Read More …

Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: Turning back the clock

How many of us would want that opportunity, and more importantly, for what reasons?  Is it to correct the remorse of thoughtless acts perpetrated in another stage of life, when youth or desperation compelled motives and intentions otherwise relegated as an anomaly but for the justification of necessity by situational relativity? […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement for Federal Employees: The compromised life

We all make them, though we deny it. Iconoclasts scorn it; the extremes of either side scoff at it; and, in the end, it reflects the reality of who we are, how we live, and by what vaunted principles we purportedly possess.

On a theoretical level, it is easy to remain the stalwart – that singular entity standing on principle and commitment. The one who has never experienced war – to express beliefs of “courage”, “unwavering loyalty” and blind bravery declared in wrappings of the flag and national identity. Or of fidelity and traditional values despite personal shortcomings of multiple marital infidelities and 3 or 4 marriages, […] Read More …