Federal Employee Disability Retirement Benefits: Threads

They are fragile and subject to being snapped; yet, we rely upon them to hold together the fabric of so many things, both in practical terms and in more nuanced settings of conceptual constructs cloaked in figurative speech.  As in Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, that invisible thread that gently tugs despite isolation, renunciation and attribution of apostasy in the chaos of cultural confusion; or of the woven cloth where thousands in aggregate intersecting patterns creates the strength of multitudes where the single entity would snap upon the breath of a dragon’s snore. […] Read More …

Medical Retirement from Civil Service: Erasing imprints

We spend half of our lives trying to accomplish that which may never be done; go to others to obtain guidance; take medications in order to stamp out the cacophony of voices from a past regenerated in mindful moments when reflection is not what we want but quietude away from the cackle of memories.  Imprints are those stamps that remain with us, like burn-marks seared indelibly into the far corners of body parts […] Read More …

OPM Medical Retirement: Dostoevsky and impassioned monologues

Does anyone read such an author, anymore?  At least, once one is beyond the assigned reading list and mandatory college compulsions that allegedly define those who are “educated” as opposed to not, does anyone perform the act out of pleasure?  Or, perhaps we would consider it more like self-torture.  Once the diploma is rolled, handed and received upon the platform of recognized accolades for accomplished feats now disseminated throughout all levels of society, where “blue collar” or physical labor is no longer perceived as acceptable and everyone must be subjected to the torture of reading Dostoevsky and his impassioned monologues […] Read More …

Medical Retirement from Federal Employment: The immovable individual

Aristotle’s unmoved mover is an interesting conceptual posit:  it is based upon the cohesive compromise between the Pre-Socratics as paradigmatic examples encapsulated by Parmenides and Heraclitus – of the universe as seen in a singular “oneness” as opposed to embroiled in constant flux and change.  The unmoved mover consolidates into a synergistic compromise the pendulum between the two extremes:  […] Read More …

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: False Positives

We demand that a “retest” be done, to ensure that the result did not have the opposite effect.  It is a linguistic conundrum that the affirmative means its negative; for, in medicine, a “positive” result is the worst of news, whereas in most every other context, it is a welcomed declarative.  But because it is a result which is not embraced with delight, […] Read More …

Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: False Promises

Is it an oxymoron? If it is made, how can it be negated by untruth; for, if it is a nothingness at the outset which compels null and void the substantive content of the thing itself, how can it purport to be what it is while at the same time creating an abyss of meaninglessness? A promise cannot be false if it is to have the very meaning of a promise; and yet, we know that there exists such falsity of posited assurances, if not proposed by dishonest individuals and con-men, then at least by unintentional or otherwise mistaken pillars of vain malfeasance. […] Read More …