fers disability retirement blog

OPM Disability Retirement: Living versus being alive

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There is a difference, is there not?  Of hummingbirds and cardinals bright against the backdrop of an evergreen; of a child running across the grassy knoll; then of aged men in nursing homes, shuttered away in corners where the drool of saliva unwiped reveals the tarnish of human unkindness; and of prisons rotting away with crowded cells for addicts whose sickness is considered a crime where, in ages past, opium dens and other vices merely preached in empty churches of the difference between mortal and venial sins unrehearsed. […] Read More …

Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: The clinical language

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The antiseptic nature of language allows for the euphemism of linguistic cloaking to occur.  The corollary effect, however, is that it fails to provide a nexus to the humanity lost, and allows for an arrogance of language by imparting its distance and separation from warmth.  Clinical language has that characteristic, steeped in the mysterious and archaic history of Gregorian chants at altars once embodying the Eucharist’s theological secrets of transubstantiation with the priesthood undulating in phrases foreign to ears of modernity; […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement: Silent lives defying interpretation

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Life is a mystery, and individual lives a puzzle untold.  It is the calluses that we develop throughout our lives that diminish our individual and collective curiosity to get to know the “other”.  We are born with a teleological intellect striving to unravel and unmask the depths of human essence; but modernity, technology and the singular focus of tangents often involving prurient asides distract and envelop with unwavering obsessions, but it has gotten worse:  […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Moving on

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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 from Federal Employment: The immovable individual

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Aristotle’s unmoved mover is an interesting conceptual posit:  it is based upon the cohesive compromise between the Pre-Socratics as paradigmatic examples encapsulated by Parmenides and Heraclitus – of the universe as seen in a singular “oneness” as opposed to embroiled in constant flux and change.  The unmoved mover consolidates into a synergistic compromise the pendulum between the two extremes:  […] Read More …

Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: False Promises

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Is it an oxymoron? If it is made, how can it be negated by untruth; for, if it is a nothingness at the outset which compels null and void the substantive content of the thing itself, how can it purport to be what it is while at the same time creating an abyss of meaninglessness? A promise cannot be false if it is to have the very meaning of a promise; and yet, we know that there exists such falsity of posited assurances, if not proposed by dishonest individuals and con-men, then at least by unintentional or otherwise mistaken pillars of vain malfeasance. […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Answering Questions

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How do we come to learn how to do it?  Certainly, we come across certain eccentric individuals who defy every conventional norm, and somehow manage to appear as if they have done what otherwise we recognize as not having been completed. Have you ever come across someone who just isn’t “quite right” – such that, when you ask a question, the tangents that flood forth and the meandering thought processes make it an arbitrary conclusion as to whether it was the specific question asked that prompted the incommensurate response, or just the mere fact of a tonal posit of a question-like query that compelled a verbal reaction, even if it has nothing to do with the substance of the question itself? […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: Illness

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It is the pause button rendered by the universe, often without warning, without invitation and unwelcomed by all. Is it the gods laughing in the heavenly seclusion, as wanton children playing with the mortality of souls unrequited, as matches in the hands of mischievous hearts undisciplined by law, life or empathy? Then comes the triteness of wisdom, yet true but too late: “Oh, what a blessing health is”; “Is there a lesson to be learned?”; “Why me?”. Is this the crisis of life that is merely an obstacle to overcome, or the long road towards a progressive decline where mortality is not just tested, but revealed as the weak link in the proverbial chain of man-to-gods-to the theology of our own creation? […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: Age

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It is only that proverbial “state of mind” for those it does not impact; then, when reality sets in, the decrepit bones and uncooperative muscles, inability to will the stamina to rise to the occasion, and the creaking temerity of organs unable to muster the vitality of even a decade ago, we submit to the currency of our own destiny. We can scoff at it; deny it; attempt to defy its residual consequences; and even remain indifferent to its effects; but in the end, mortality demands a say in the matter, and age is like the ravages of time and the echoes of a haunting flaw […] Read More …