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OPM Disability Retirement: The hospital bed

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It is a lonely and demoralizing state of affairs; they poke, prod and insist upon ruling out every sector of one’s body as the culprit of diagnosed maladies. The hospital bed is a barbaric contraption next to a mediaeval torture chamber, and one can only imagine what such inventions were like in those olden days, when antiseptic means meant the possibility of washing one’s hands every now and again, and where pain and death were part of everyday living. It reminds us, above all, of our own vulnerability and mortality; and what a blessing health and life are. […] Read More …

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Wisdom’s hold on life

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We never quite “get it”. Trans-generational imputing of wisdom is not part of modern society. In more “traditional” societies, multi-generational families live together out of practical reasons: Not only is it less expensive if the earnings are pooled into a single resource of means, but until marriage or an offer of economic leverage pulls a member away from the core, imparting of wisdom, experience and voices of learned care may be passed down from generation to generation. In the West, instead, the rush is to depart and fracture; to get away as quickly as possible; for, as youth is the cult of modernity, so folly of youth is the means by which we live. […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement Benefits: Messy lives

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In those Eisenhower years with residual trails into the following decade, we had those perfect television paradigms – of “Leave it to Beaver”, “Father knows best” and “My Three Sons”, while the world around began its transformational process. Hollywood decided much later that they needed to be at the forefront, leading social change and forcing cultural avant-garde transitions even if merely experimental and questionable for any positive good. That decision is in stark contrast to the turmoil of the 1960s and 70s, where the staid and stodgy traditionalism of television series barely reflected the reality of the deconstructionism occurring in real time. […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement Application: The tumescent narrative

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The pendulum between a swollen ego and a timid conscience can be wide and vast; or of the difference between panicked shyness amounting to a hermit’s refuge, and arrogance in man that betrays the smallness of one’s heart. Being “puffed up” is one thing; demanding one’s rights without persuasive argumentation, quite another. In formulating one’s “story” in preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, specifically on SF 3112A, Applicant’s Statement of Disability, the undersigned lawyer has seen […] Read More …

Civil Service Disability Retirement Benefits: Human activity

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The dizzying pace of it all defies comprehension. We are, indeed, busy-bees, always engaged in this project, that protest, intervening in the affairs of others when our own are in such a state of disarray; up at it early in the morning and continuing until exhaustion sets in or wayward dementia in old age where even nursing homes impose human activity every night – bingo, dance, meditation, Tai Chi, family visitation day; not even a break for the aged. […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement: The sweater draped over a chair

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You look in the room and see the sweater draped over a chair. You turn your gaze elsewhere, engage the ongoing conversations and the din of others distracted. Later, you turn back your gaze again, and the sweater is gone. You look about to try and see whether someone picked it back up, is wearing it, or perhaps put it somewhere else. You imply and infer – yes, one must follow the general grammatical rule that the speaker implies while the listener infers; but you are both the speaker and the listener, the one who observes and the same one who steps outside of the conscious universe to observe the observed. […] Read More …

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement under FERS or CSRS: Clueless

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We are, for the most part, clueless in most things. Those very limited subjects of which we are deemed an “expert” or having some partial knowledge about, are merely one in a million, and so we walk around thinking highly of ourselves, yet clueless in 99.9% of everything else. Fortunately, there is no criminal statute that can be imposed upon being clueless. Life is complex enough without having to acknowledge that we walk about without any real idea as to how to tackle the problems; but as braggadocio wins the day for most people, […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement: What to do

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Does anyone really know what to do? From the very beginning, we are brought into this world without having been asked, and never with any instructions entitled, “Life instructions in ‘how to’”. Instead, we are thrown into the ravages of this impervious universe. We are lucky if we have some kind parents; otherwise, as with most of us, they are as clueless as we are, and sometimes even more so. What do we do with the rest of our lives? How do we determine if the course we have chosen is worthwhile? When do we determine if the choices presented are the ones that will forever be offered, […] Read More …

U.S. Government Employees Disability Retirement: Failing to meet those goals

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Goals define an aspect of humanity that differentiates from the beast; just look at nature and the existential encounter with the “now” at all times. Animals besides Man look at the world around and respond appropriately and accordingly. For them, the future is the now; the past is merely a basis upon which to react in this moment of time; and what the appetitive parts of the soul require, the predator attempts to satisfy. Goals, on the other hand, project into the future. […] Read More …

Medical Retirement from Civil Service: Preparing properly for each stage

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We often hear (and perhaps secretly scoff at?) the modern verbiage of a “Holistic” approach, where the missing consonant makes all the difference – as in the non-word, “Whole-istic”. It is the approach often ignored and replaced by its cousin – of looking at each stage of every unit in and of itself without taking into account the entirety of the process of an administrative procedure. For Federal Disability Retirement purposes, that is entirely and wholly a wrong approach. No unit or stage is an island, entire of itself; every stage of the process is a piece of the whole, […] Read More …