fers disability retirement handbook

Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: The wrong target

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What if you are involved in the highest levels of competitive marksmanship – say, target shooting by a rifle, or crossbow, or bow and arrow, or even by a pistol. You shot throughout the morning, and hit the bulls eye every time; your opponents try to keep up with you, but at each level of competition, there is a slight deviation here, a centimeter there, and systematically, the competition is “eliminated”, and you are left standing at the podium of the “winner”. As the trophy is brought out, the Chief Judge who is about to present the awards and ceremonial crown, pauses, […] Read More …

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: The Moral Code lost in pragmatism

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Kant is the best example, and is used often.  Of that arrogance defined by universalization of a query; and if we are willing to apply it in all circumstances, regardless of individual differences that may matter in the context of exceptions recognized, we are to adhere to that which may harm our own interests.  Why is transcendence important?  […] Read More …

Federal Employee Medical Retirement Benefits: The Diary

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Many begin the process at an early age, then abandon it with little remorse or afterthought, as a worthless project discarded for want of inherent value; and when, years and even decades later, it is discovered behind a bureau or a secret cubbyhole where trinkets and memorabilia retaining an eternal aura of privately precious remembrances are stored away, we shriek with joy as if the lottery had been won, a proposal has been declared, or a camouflaged vault containing the mysteries of gemstones […] Read More …

OPM Medical Retirement: Balance and Order in a Lost World

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Once achieved, death destroys; it is the anomaly of life, that the linear progression leads toward its own terminus, and by slow and incremental degeneration, its own vivacity is defined by a sense of self-immolation. The realization of attainment almost always occurs upon surpassing the apex of an ordering of one’s life, and so the inevitable decline necessarily diminishes any joy derived from self-reflection of having achieved that balance and order for which we strive. […] Read More …

Medical Retirement from Federal Government Employment: Chekhov’s gun

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It is the ultimate principle of substantive minimalism, where extraneous and peripheral elements should be eradicated unless used, essential, or otherwise central to the narrative. Teasing merely for the sake of itself is denied; a serious venture if always pursued, and open honesty with the audience forever relied upon. Chekhov disdained and avoided the superfluous; his short stories and other works were paradigms of linguistic economy, where words were valued and cherished, without room left for an unused element. […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement: Of the Black Widow

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The subtlety of its attractiveness is often overlooked because of its mythology of potent venomousness, where it is said that its sting is more than 15 times the deadliness of a mere prairie rattlesnake, which — at least we can attribute an anthropomorphic characteristic of favorability — warns one with its loud systems resulting from its namesake. It is often invisible, as its black and unassuming appearance allows for quiet traversing along the undersides of human existence; and the signature red or orange marking, […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Medical Disability Retirement: Language Decoupled

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The correspondence theory of truth has long since been abandoned; whether by congruence or of fair representation, the classical model dating back to Plato and Aristotle has been replaced by Wittgenstein‘s description of “language games“, which really possesses no reflection upon the objective world which surrounds us “out there”. With the advent of virtual reality; the blurred distinction between truth and falsity as merely words in play; and Bertrand Russell’s playful destruction of any such theory […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: A Series of Refinements

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Age does not necessarily result in greater wisdom; rather, for many, it merely sits in a puddle of stale intransigence. As well, palpable advancement on a linear scale occurs only in the context of the capacity to make progress, but remains in a state of limbo without an intermediate causal impetus. Throughout life, it is the refinements made which make for differentiation. A minor tweak here; a self-reproachful reminder here; for, very few begin the journey needing a complete overhaul, but merely a readjustment and cleaning of those spark-plugs gone bad. […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement: Plans, purposes and pivoting positions

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The first in the series indicates the human endeavor of imagination and creativity, unique sets of binary forecasts projecting into a beautification of one’s future; the second, the qualitative and substantive core which motivates and impels the preceding characteristic and transforms it from mere ethereal musings into a concretized formulation of action; and the final element of the tripartite aggregate represents the capacity and ability of a person to remain adaptable, malleable, ready to take into consideration new data and conform appropriately, such that the originating plan is never abandoned but merely evolved into a pragmatic reflection […] Read More …

Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: The Future of Now

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Human beings have the unlimited capacity of projecting into the future, such that a present picture of what may occur some time hence can be visualized; but whether and how many bring the future to the fore, such that the present becomes encompassed into the reflective reality of current circumstances, is of an imaginative rendering few take the time to engage in. By focusing upon the future as some ethereal fog somewhere in the distant netherworlds, we can justify the tendency to procrastinate and kick the proverbial can down the road; […] Read More …