A nightstand of disorganization

I am very organized … to an annoying fault, in fact.

I re-stack the dishes in the dishwasher after my wife is done loading to make them look more orderly. I have everything of mine in its place in the manner that satisfies my Type A personality.

But I’ve lost control of the reading material on my nightstand.

It’s chaos. It’s a pile of reading material that seems to have no beginning and no end. It is the alpha and the omega, the infinity of disorganization.

My problem is that I’ve given myself too much to read, and the overload has negated my ability to get organized abut it.

My nightstand has just-read books that I haven’t shelved yet in my home office/music conservatory/library.

There are the books that are in the process of being read -- one a biography of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, the other a thriller from David Baldacci. God knows if they’ll ever get read. If they are still in the process of being read it usually means I don’t like them very much, but I’m loath to give up on a book.

There is a Jack Higgins books that, looking at it, I’m not sure if I’ve read it or not. I think not since it’s in the middle of the pile. But I’m not really sure.

There is the Robert Parker Spenser mystery I just bought this week and added to the pile.

And there’s the Nook, my electronic book reader that I bought from Barnes & Noble and have loaded with a few books that also have yet to be read. At least with the Nook the unread pile is buried in the electronics so I don’t see it as much.

I read a lot, but I read in spurts.

During the course of a day, my reading is focused on the research I do for my freelance writing and editing work.

My nightstand reading is for, well, nighttime.

And most nights when I crack a book -- or fire up a page, in the case of the Nook -- I don’t read for very long.

By the time I get to bed my brain has devolved to about one quarter speed, so it doesn’t take long for the act of reading to complete unwind me to sleep.

You know the drill. How many times can you read a paragraph before you realize it’s time to close up shop and go to sleep?

I do most of my leisure reading during leisure time.

Maybe the trick is to reorganize my life in general to give me more leisure time. Good luck with that.