Your nightstand as a reflection of your life

From the very first, since our wedding night, I have always slept on the right side of the bed while Terry has always slept on the left side.

That's speaking from our perspective as the occupants of the bed. It would be the opposite if you stood at the foot of the bed and looked at us while we were sleeping, though this would be creepy and I don't know why you would do it.

Anyway, this arrangement has actually never made sense to me in that I am left-handed while Terry is right-handed, which means we're always using our non-dominant hands to reach for things on our respective nightstands.

This may seem inconsequential, but my nightstand is one of the most important and underrated pieces of furniture I own.

As you can see above, it is home to my lamp, my clock radio, my phone charger, and my Apple Watch charger, along with a host of books and notebooks.

Behind the phone charger is also the tube of Chapstick I use every night just before we go to bed because I have a thing about chapped lips.

This nightstand is clearly central to my existence.

The books on top of the nightstand, by the way, are the books currently "in rotation," as they used to say in the radio business. They're the ones I'm reading or at least trying to read at the moment (along with the hefty "Castles of Steel," which you can see resting on the floor next to the nightstand and about which I recently told you).

The in-rotation books at the moment include my friend Brian Sooy's "The Gift of Small Potatoes," "The War Poems of Wilfred Owen" (which my daughter Elissa and her boyfriend Mark thoughtfully bought for me), and my former co-worker and current friend Kate Tonti's debut children's book, "Lionel Lincoln Lawrence LePet: The Loudest Child Anyone's Ever Met."

The books at the bottom of the nightstand are waiting to be read and re-read. They need to be patient. I will get to them.

Inside that pullout drawer is a host of stuff that constitutes a true bedroom junk drawer, ranging from spare batteries to birthday cards I've received to a portable communion set to a large collection of free-range paperclips.

I'm not sure what my nightstand says about me beyond the fact that I really need more storage space in my life.