opm stress leave long term

FERS or CSRS Medical Retirement: Of the repugnance in being lectured to

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It is not merely a matter of slight irritation or resistance to change; it is an innate, in-bred rebelliousness which is part of the unique character of the American personhood. People don’t like being lectured to. Whether emanating from the rugged individualism of pioneers and the manifest destiny taught and ingrained within the historicity of our short background, exploding with a sense of independence refuting prior declarations of conforming wisdom imparted; or, perhaps it is merely the collective DNA of those who would flee from oppression or abandon the security and safety of known normative constraints for greater opportunity and a new start in a strange and alien land; regardless of the origin and foundation, […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: Superiority in light of misfortune

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Why is it that we delight in the misfortune of others? Is it a perversity of defective character, like a genetic malformation of deviancy magnified by exponential proportions within the essence of man? Or, is it that, by comparative analysis and contrasting the parallel states of being, we can elevate our own estimation of worth by pointing to the relative denigration of our neighbor? Certainly, we proffer the words of appropriate opprobrium; “I feel badly for X”; “I get no joy out of hearing that,” and similarly innocuous statements of hypocritical emptiness. […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement: The Hesitant Hole

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The famous one, of course, and the one which draws the imagination, is depicted in Lewis Carroll’s tale of Alice and her journey down the rabbit’s abyss; another, the one which determines the relative shortcomings of weather predictability, but that one is guided more by shadows and perceptions from above, as opposed to the one dug below; or, there is the one which we dig for ourselves, and the proverbial timelessness of our foolish deeds. […] Read More …

Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: Epochal Dawns

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There are those momentous events in life which we mark and memorialize; and, in the end, whether the cumulative bag of goodies amounts to a positive aggregate, or a negation of sorrows, we determine in the quietude of private thoughts. Avoidance of future uncertainty is a talent wrought only by humans; for animals of other species, they cannot afford such luxuries, as survival in the here and now constitutes reality of future causality. For us, there is today; tomorrow will take care of itself within the constructs of fear, angst and uncertainty; and as Heidegger would have it, the projects we savor are the ones which delay thoughts of tomorrow, death, and the certainty of extinction. […] Read More …

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: The Trauma of Change

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There is comfort and security in the monotony of routine; for many, even a slight alteration in the identity of daily action presents a threat to the coherence of a world created and maintained.  Old men and women who suffer from the destructive forces of dementia rely upon it; homes which house the aging population, abandoned by obligation and freed from trust of children now grown, lean upon the crutch of sameness, as if sanity depended upon a universe determined to defy detour of deference. […] Read More …

Federal Medical Retirement: The X Factor

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In algebraic equations, it is that unknown variable which remains elusive and concealed, and which must be figured out in order to arrive at the conclusion. We love those teachers who inform us that “credit” will be “given” for work shown, and that it is not so important to come up with the answer as opposed to the methodology manifested in reaching it. And so we devised a complex network of signs and symbols, hoping that they concealed the ignorance of our unlearned lack of wisdom. But the fact remains that leaving the factor unexplained and unfulfilled is like turning one’s back upon a helpless puppy abandoned in the middle of a busy freeway; […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement: Masking Imperfections

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Have you ever noticed how British actors don’t have the same perfectly white teeth as their American counterparts? Or, for that matter, any non-American, foreign television personality; unless, of course, they have lived here for a few years, in which case they have already undergone the cosmetic transformation of dental voila. Beware of that which one preaches for others; for, someday, it may come back to embrace the hypocrisy of one’s being. Yet, when something becomes the normative standard for everyone, then boredom and monotony of purpose begins to set in. […] Read More …