FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement Application: The tumescent narrative

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 …

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Our narrative of discourse

Do we all carry about multiple narratives within? Perhaps, one for public consumption; another, for family gatherings; yet another the edited version only for the ears of the young and uninitiated; and perhaps more, depending upon the audience, the susceptibility to believe, and the necessity for coherence as opposed to self-promotion and puffing up? How about those “Service experiences” – where we get carried away in exaggerating the feats of bravery and encounters with the enemy? […] Read More …

FERS Disability Retirement: “Oh, can I help?”

It is the grammatical interjection or discourse marker; in either usage, it is in response to some new or surprising information received. Thus do we often encounter that individual (we all know of at least one) who, sitting silently, idly and unnoticed throughout, suddenly perks up after all (or most) of the work has been done – whether in preparation of a meal; cleaning up after the dinner party; or where the main elements of a project have just been completed. And the uninvited interjection: “Oh, can I help?” […] Read More …

Medical Retirement from Federal Service: The helpful other perspective

Before going “whole-hog” with anything in life, the greater wisdom often confirms that we should try and obtain a differing perspective on the matter, if only to affirm the correctness of our own, or to consider the fissures and weaknesses we are blind to. Wise people seek wisdom; fools travel down roads not merely untested, but even unprepared. Such a tautology is a mere self-evident fact of life, but we nevertheless follow blindly where the blind leads. If an individual discounts the criticisms of everyone else, then the wisdom one holds is merely the price of one’s own mistakes, […] Read More …

Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: Leaving that legacy behind

We hear about it from ‘high-end achievers’; and every President now builds large temples to themselves, like some Greek gods with immortal canopies and call them “libraries” for the common minion to think that it is like those warm and fuzzy buildings we once visited in order to escape the ravages of our sordid childhoods. Perhaps it is the realization of that which has come back to haunt us: Darwinism, pure materialism, and the abandonment of faith in hobbits, gnomes and angels from beyond, that leaves us with the stark nakedness of our own mortality, and the need to fulfill that vacancy by building lasting memorials that only crumble with the decadence of time. […] Read More …