Medical Retirement under FERS: Why we endure

Why, indeed?  We have all come to a point where we have just had it, and want to “chuck it all” in – into what, we often only have an obscure sense, or none at all, but it is the feeling of having reached a pinnacle of despair and those proverbial depths of despondency.  There is, fortunately or unfortunately, no hidden corner or secret room to which we can scurry away to, never to be seen again, remain unnoticed and left without the troubles of the day. […] Read More …

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: The fading sheen of respect

It happens over time; and, perhaps, in marriages where discovery of once-cute characteristics become irritants, when tics of unique personalities transform into obstacles, and the surface beauty of looks gradually morph into the reality of superficiality of egocentric psychosis. But, then, a career is like a marriage, but lacking the intimacy of misguided warmth. Disdain – does it develop instantaneously? Does the remark of condescension and arrogance, cutting into the soul by drips and drabs, […] Read More …

OPM Accepted Medical Conditions

The problem with “lists” is that, the moment one realizes that one is not on the list, the tendency is to simply give up and go home.  But lists are rarely exhaustive; rather, most are merely to provide a “paradigm” or “type”, as opposed to exclusionary intent by failing to specify or name.  Thus, for Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are considering preparing, […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement: Life as a Byproduct

When it happens, or how, is of insignificant notice; the incremental arrival, where past segments of time seemed to traverse epochs where memories captured mere millennia of lifetimes; and then, one day, you wake up and yawn, and your life has taken on an incidental, tertiary level of importance. One has been living by negation for so long, any positive or affirmative step has become a ghost of not just a Christmas past, but of decades evaporated. […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement from OPM: Identity Crisis

It is how we view ourselves as one entity among others; where the I-Thou relationship corresponds to the perspective we have of ourselves, of others, and within the micro and macro-communities we engage and with which we interact. Who we are; how we see ourselves; what constitutes value and worth; whether productivity is defined merely by the volume of paperwork shuffled, or in the manufacturing of items shipped to far-off places; and the constancy of eyes which discern the essence of a person’s place in society. […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement: Evaluative Adaptability

Life is often like a boat without oars, let alone a motor which functions; and as the waves rock the water transport, one maintains balance, sanity and survival by attempting to prepare for the whitecaps and hoping for a further delay of a storm, and never a tsunami. But those changes inevitably come, and attack in onslaughts of exponential fury. One attempts to adapt, to remain like the chameleon who must survive by an unwanted metamorphosis, in order to maintain the delicate balance of nature as described by the brutality of Darwin’s world. […] Read More …