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 Government Disability Retirement: The Best of Mediocrity

There is an overriding principle that, where excellence is sought, higher expectations are exceeded.  Acceptance of a given human condition and resignation to that which is less than the best, is to embrace the heart of banality and to reject that august status reserved for the human species, of being above the animals and just below the angels. […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement: The idealist, the skeptic and the cynic

The idealist possesses the dreams of hope and promise; the skeptic, the singe of hurt enough to dampen the spirit; and the cynic, well, he is the grumpy old man who has seen it all, been battered about by the reality of experiential confrontations where tales make the sweat pour from salted wounds too hurtful for words to embrace. Do they represent a tripartite spectrum of thoughts, feelings and motives, or merely unconnected differences demarcated by time, encounters and length of procrastinated envy? Do we all begin with the zeal of idealism, pass through the comfort of skepticism, then end up bedridden in the cocoon of cynicism? […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement: How Long Can Negation Define Living?

The tipping point where negation of living constitutes greater time spent than affirmative enjoyment of the activity engaged, is determined by individual choices and preferences. Some individuals retain a higher threshold for pain, discomfort, and capacity to endure; and the fact that an MRI reveals a degenerative or decaying physical attribute does not necessarily correlate with the capability to ignore or otherwise minimize the magnitude of pain. […] Read More …

OPM Medical Retirement Attorney: Formulating the Effective Case

Is it inherently presupposed that a case to be formulated is one which should be “effective”?  By the insertion of that term, of course, it immediately implies a retrospective vantage point — an “ends” to “means” view of an outcome-based approach.  If a Federal or Postal employee who files for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement: Reflections on Winter’s Desolation

Seasons bring out certain characteristics and traits of primate natures; and while artificial lighting, civilized constructs of community comforts and technological distractions of virtual reality may somewhat temper the appetitive rhythms of inherent evolutionary origins, the fact is that our attempts to suspend the reality of our nature can only be met with partial success. Winter is a time of desolation (unless, of course, one’s home is based in a climate where seasons barely change, in which case the envy of others will reach you through temporal vibrations of mental jealousies). […] Read More …

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: Conceptual Relationships

Word associations are revealing. When once a word is uttered, the immediate association of another concept provides a prelude to the cognitive perspective of an individual. Conceptual relationships are forged through upbringing, personal experiences, and memories fulfilled through impact, trauma, significance of meaning, and attribution of value. The thinking “I” within the subjective realm of a personal universe, is made up of ghosts of the past, goblins of present fears, and gadflies yet to swarm. […]

 
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Federal & Postal Medical Retirement: Imagining a Life Beyond

The known quantity provides a semblance of comfort; the unknown, a stirring of unease.  That which has been repetitively engaged, through monotony of routine and familiarity of choice, is preferable to the haphazard disorientation of the disrupted interlude.  As one grows older, entrenchment to routine and the known universe becomes the comfort zone of defaulted alternatives, […] Read More …

Federal Disability Retirement: Rhythmic Interruptions

A simple alteration such as moving the clock forward or backward one hour, in accordance with daylight savings time, can interrupt the rhythmic habituation of daily living. Such minor tinkering has greater impact than we care to concede, and to which we fail to respond appropriately. Man enjoys the pinnacle of technological snobbery; daily, he lives “as if”; whether lost in the insular privacy of his own thoughts, or deliberately in the parallel universes created through video escapism, […] Read More …