Federal Disability Retirement Benefits: Escaping reality

In some sense, everyone does it; in another, no one can.  For, in a general, generic meaning of the term, to “escape reality” is to merely engage in an activity that allows one to take a break from the ordinary and mundane, as in going to a movie, watching television, playing a video game or engaging a game of chess. In the same vein of meaning, however, one could argue that such leisurely pastimes constitute a reality no less real than working, dealing with life in other ways and attending to one’s daily duties and obligations – it is simply in a different “form”. […] Read More …

Medical Retirement from the Office of Personnel Management: The soul’s net worth

What is one’s sole net worth? In a written format, the distinction between the two concepts are quite obvious; but if in a verbal exchange, would we be able to catch that subtle distinction of nonexistent intonation? For, the exchange of the vowel “u” in the middle of the word for an “e” attached to the tail alters the meaning of the query, does it not? From an evaluation of one’s singular calculation – of taking the gross amounts of estimated value of possessions and purchases and subtracting outstanding debts, etc., and accounting for one’s sole net worth – not taking into consideration one’s spouse’s inheritance or assets predictably to be acquired […] Read More …

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Tolstoy unedited

To read his works often entails utilization of descriptive metaphors, such as “tackle”, or “spend the summer” doing it, or even, “It has taken me a year to reach the midpoint”. To have read Tolstoy’s major works is a kind of initiation into the upper echelons of cultivated sophistication; how many fakes and phonies there are, can only be guessed at, but some would estimate that nearly half of those claiming to have read “War and Peace” or “Anna Karenina” either failed to complete the rite of passage, skimmed or skipped major portions of either or both, or simply studied carefully the Cliff Notes in the secluded corner of nefarious midnight travails. […] Read More …

Federal Employee Medical Retirement System under FERS or CSRS: The footnote

Who reads them, anymore? Defined as an ancillary or corollary piece of information beyond that which is stated in the body of the main text, the footnote represents that which reflects an addendum and not something that is considered “required reading”, but more likely for the benefit of those who enjoy quixotic minutiae and esoteric details of irrelevant import.* As referenced in history, one who is relegated to the afterthought failed to reach the first order of things, and their lack of relevance is reflected by banishment to the bottom of the page. […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement: Sedimentary Structures

In interpreting geological formations by natural deposits involving complex strata of ahistorical significance, we are better able to conceptualize the environment, the impact of changes by weather, temperature vicissitudes, and organic alterations whether man-made or neutral in their deliberations. River flows and their swirls of changing directions; droughts, sudden floods, or the soft and natural flow of a forming inlet; these all impact and influence the sedimentary structures which form over time, unnoticed to an ahistorical perspective. […] Read More …

OPM Medical Retirement: Balance and Order in a Lost World

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 …