I should be totally jazzed about going back to work tomorrow and, in many ways, I am. However, I’m extremely nervous and scared about how my inability to use both hands and the tremendous slowness with which I can use the “functional” hand will impact my work life. It’s sucking the joy right out of me.

I’m nervous enough that I felt sick to my stomach at dinner (7pm) and ate some dry wheat toast and a bit of Boston lettuce as a salad for dinner; in short, I’m worrying myself sick. I took a sleeping pill at 9:30 and then a Percocet at 10 since my wrist began to throb painfully - and I still can’t relax enough to fall asleep. Usually, one Percocet tablet will knock me out 15 minutes later. Tonight, it’s getting to be two hours ‘post-ingestion’ with no effect.

Until I decided to get out of bed and occupy myself with this, I was in bed worrying and thinking and (mentally) carrying on about the friend issue I mentioned earlier today. Here I was, thinking it had been 20 minutes since I last looked at the clock when in reality it’s been an hour and 49 minutes. This realization, plus the fact that I was about to start crying and was listening to the sound of my pulse “in” my pillow and getting angry at it (like you’d be upset over a very noisy ticking clock or dripping faucet when you’re trying to fall sleep.)

Time to just browse some sites until I get drowsy… distraction is key.

Update: from the NPR “Arts & Culture” RSS feed… and on their site.

I need to find one of my CDs. It’s a compilation of different performances of Barber’s Adagio - the one pictured here, actually. It’s got a choral version, several string renditions and one performed by the Canadian Brass. I’m sure there are lots of people out there who’d poo-poo this piece as “too popular,” but the NPR piece puts it in an interesting historical context to explain part of its popularity.

Here’s an excerpt:

The “Adagio for Strings” was written by American composer Samuel Barber when he was in his 20s. With a tense melodic line and taut harmonies, the composition is considered by many to be the most popular of all 20th-century orchestral works.

“You never are in any doubt about what this piece is about, says music historian Barbara Heyman. “There’s a kind of sadness and poetry about it. It has a melodic gesture that reaches an arch, like a big sigh… and then exhales and fades off into nothingness.”

And the drugs are kicking in. Sleep time.