chronic pain

So I Gave My First Footjob…

Kate Sloan
Sneakers by Converse, clogs by Lotta From Stockholm.

For reasons unknown, I’ve dated an above-average number of foot fetishists. I guess it makes sense if you consider that I mostly date other kinksters, and feet are one of the most common kinks. But when I think about the kind of person who would date multiple foot fetishists, I think about someone who has beautiful, soft, elegant feet, and I’ve never really thought of myself as that kind of person.

I think a lot of us grow up with feet-related insecurities, which may be part of why feet are fetishized so often. We worry about sweat, smells, dirtiness. We hide our feet away under socks and shoes much of the time, so that displaying them openly can feel almost as vulnerable as nudity. Still to this day, I feel weird in sandals, like I’m cosplaying as a type of girl I’ve never really been.

I’ve certainly never felt confident enough about my feet to want to model for fetish sites like Love Her Feet. But over the course of a few relationships with foot fetishists, I eventually got a little more comfortable taking foot pics when requested. (If you’re interested, I have an all-feet photo set available for purchase. That link is the only place on the internet where you can get sexy pictures of my feet!)

That being said, confidence in photos is a bit different from confidence in real life. When partners would want to do things like sniff my feet, massage them, or suck on my toes, I’d freeze up. Sometimes I’d enjoy these things when they would happen, but only if I was able to get over my near-paralyzing anxiety about it, which was rare.

Recently, my partner requested a footjob. They’ve requested one several times before but I’ve always felt too nervous to do it. I was worried not only about my feet but also about the contorted position I’d probably have to get into; I don’t have a lot of flexibility in my hips, knees or ankles due to my fibromyalgia, and a lot of the footjobs I’d seen in porn had involved someone’s legs being splayed wide open with their knees deeply bent to stroke a dick between their soles, a shape I knew my body just wouldn’t be able to get into. Hell, I can barely sit cross-legged on the floor for more than a few minutes before every joint below my waist starts throbbing with pain. On that note, I was also nervous about how I’d look while trying to bend myself into the right shape.

However, one of the skills I’ve picked up from therapy is being able to break down an anxiety-provoking situation to look more closely at the specific anxiety triggers it contains, in order to figure out if I can do anything about them. When I thought about each of the individual pieces of the puzzle that were fueling my footjob fears, I saw a few potential solutions, which could be used alone or in tandem:

  1. Get a pedicure prior to the footjob.
  2. Find a comfortable position that works for my body.
  3. Blindfold my partner so they can’t see what I’m doing.

I ended up doing the latter 2 things from this list. One night I had my partner lie on their back in bed and put a blindfold on. I laid on my side next to them and lubed up their dick and the sole of one of my feet. Then I bent my knee enough that my sole could rest on the underside of their dick and had just enough range of movement to slide up and down the length of it in a teasing manner.

And yes, my hip and knee joints started to ache after a few minutes, but I knew that wasn’t the end of the world. I kept up some low dirty talk in their ear while holding onto my leg with my arms, so that my arm muscles could take on some of the strain and give my leg a break. As the action crescendoed, at certain points I had to use my arms to physically move my leg up and down because my leg muscles and joints were just done. But, as often happens, the yummy neurochemicals of being in a sexy situation with a hot person were enough to make the pain mostly feel like part of the experience, rather than antithetical to it.

Eventually they came, and it was hot. I think I had them lick some of their own cum off my foot, possibly while still blindfolded. Overall, a positive experience – and one I definitely didn’t think I’d ever have, prior to being in this relationship.

The moral of the story is: In the realm of sex, as in other realms of life, you will encounter things that scare you but that seem worth doing anyway. Self-knowledge can be even more important than courage in these cases, because it is your knowledge of yourself, your body, and your brain that will enable you to approach the situation in a way that works for you. And when you do it your way, courage comes much more easily. Dip your toe in and see what happens.

 

This post contains a sponsored link. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Traveling While Chronically Ill: My Must-Haves

Kate Sloan
gotta love those flattering airport portraits

Later this week I have to get on a plane for the first time in a while, and I’m dreading it. Of course, I’m thrilled to be able to go see my spouse, especially since it’ll have been over a month since I last saw them – but the travel itself? Not my fave.

Travel tends to be hell on my chronically ill body, for so many reasons: the stress, the rushing, the cold air, the cramped seats, the waiting around, the social anxiety, the lugging of luggage… Usually by the end of a travel day I am a husk of myself, like I’ve been body-snatched by a sullen alien. Not fun!

However, in all the travel I’ve done as part of this long-distance relationship, I’ve learned how to mitigate my symptoms as best as I can, before, during, and after traveling. Here’s what works for me, incase it helps any of you too…

 

Routine

Routine is the most important thing for me in my travels. Without a routine, I fall to pieces.

My current travel routine involves making a packing list about a week in advance, packing my suitcase over the course of 1-2 days before I leave (spacing it out as needed due to fatigue and pain), checking into my flight online in advance so I don’t have to do it at the airport, and getting to the airport at least 2.5 hours before my flight takes off. If it’s possible to pre-select a seat, I choose one by the window so I don’t have to get up/move around at all once the flight takes off, and can rest/nap if I need to. (I always have my eye mask with me to block out light incase I need a quick snooze, or am just feeling overwhelmed and need to exist only inside my own head for a while.)

Part of my routine is knowing exactly where I have to go and what I have to do: my terminal, gate, flight number, seat number, etc. I’ll stash my passport and boarding pass in an outer pocket of my carry-on bag so I always know where they are and can access them quickly. Basically my goal is to pre-emptively eliminate as much stress and uncertainty as I possibly can.

 

Outfit

My go-to travel outfit is as follows:

  • A simple modal slip dress, possibly with an Aerie bralette underneath
  • Black cotton leggings
  • A cardigan over top (cotton in the summer, cashmere in the winter)
  • Cozy socks
  • Black leather boots

Traveling is such an ordeal that I always want to be as comfortable as possible, all day long. If that means having to wear a literal nightgown onto the plane (albeit dressed up with various other elements to make it look more presentable), so be it! I also hate feeling stressed and rushed in the TSA line, so I engineer my travel outfits to be easy to disassemble and reassemble as needed.

Planes are usually pretty cold, regardless of what the temperature is outside, and cold is one of my big pain triggers, so I never regret having a cardigan with me. If it’s super hot out, I might keep the cardigan in my bag until I get onto the plane, but I always bring one.

 

Luggage

Luggage cubes are transformative! They are little zippered cases that you can use to organize what you pack. I’ve found them crucial for longer stays, when I don’t want to have to rip my entire suitcase apart to find a fresh pair of underwear or a new shirt. Usually I’ll keep underwear and socks in one, T-shirts in another, and dresses in another. Not only does this make my stuff easier to find; it also helps with compressing my clothes so they take up less space and I can fit more things in my suitcase.

I used to be the type of person who could pack a small carry-on and be fine, but these days I tend to take longer trips and also just don’t have the strength to lug a suitcase around the airport with me anymore, so I always check it instead. It’s pricey – usually $50 for one bag or $80 for two – but I view it as a “disability tax” I just have to pay because my body physically cannot manage as much as an able-bodied person’s can.

Having to wait around at the baggage carousel after my flight is sometimes annoying, especially since at that point I’m usually so mentally and physically exhausted that having to wait a few extra minutes feels like an affront to my sanity, but I just try to calm myself down by playing games on my phone until the bags come out.

 

Carry-On

My go-to carry-on bag is a black leather Holiday Lane Page tote by Kate Spade. Previously it was a big turquoise leather tote by Coach. My carry-on needs to be comfortable to carry and able to hold all my stuff. It also needs to have a proper zip closure so it doesn’t spill everywhere when I stash it under the airplane seat in front of me. I use the hell out of these bags so I usually have to replace mine every 2-3 years or so (the handles inevitably start to wear through and the bag starts to lose its shape from overuse).

I usually buy some snacks (ideally granola bars or protein bars) at an airport shop once I’ve gone through security and stash them in my bag. Travel sometimes makes me feel a bit faint from all the overexertion and anxiety, and slightly sugary snacks can help. Also always a good idea to grab some gum to chew during takeoff and landing to help with ear-popping. And I always buy some water, because plane air is incredibly drying and dehydration can exacerbate anxiety and pain.

I try to bring distractions that I find joyful and uplifting, since air travel is so… not. Usually I’ll bring my Kindle stocked with good books, my iPad with some games downloaded and some Instapaper articles queued up, my phone and headphones for listening to podcasts or music, and my Nintendo Switch or 3DS for gaming. Sometimes I’ll also journal on the plane, so I gotta have my Moleskine notebook and a pen that won’t explode in the air.

 

Meds

Air travel is so exhausting, stressful, and demanding for me that I always end up experiencing a lot of body pain during and after travel, so sometimes I’ll pre-empt it by taking a painkiller (naproxen) before leaving for the airport or getting onto the plane. It takes the edge off, at least. I’ll also make sure to take my iron supplement on a travel day because otherwise I run the risk of feeling anaemic and maybe even fainting.

My doctor prescribed me an anxiety medication, Ativan, which I only ever use in emergencies because it’s habit-forming. Usually I keep some in my bag when I travel, because I know from experience that delays, cancellations, last-minute schedule changes, and other stressors can trigger an anxiety attack for me pretty easily, especially since I’ve had so many anxious experiences in airports that my body has a somewhat Pavlovian reaction to them now.

If I’m really freaked out, sometimes I’ll take a weed edible before leaving for the airport, but I wouldn’t recommend this unless 1) you know the route of your journey very well and don’t anticipate it’ll change much AND 2) you have lots of experience with this particular intoxicant and can therefore behave yourself even if you get a little loopy. (It would not be fun to be kicked off a plane for belligerent behavior à la Kristen Wiig in Bridesmaids.)

 

Arrival

These days I will almost always order an Uber to take me from the airport to wherever I’m staying, if it’s at all financially feasible. The stress of trying to find my way to a subway station or shuttle bus after the ordeal of travel is just too much for my body and brain. I’ve learned from all my experiences that immediately post-flight is a time when I’m highly likely to feel weirdly depressed out of nowhere, due to sheer exhaustion, and that’s a state in which I often feel unable to figure out public transport, especially if I’m worried I might start crying in public (it happens!).

Once I get to my destination, I need to relax. My spouse knows never to plan anything heavy-duty for the night of my arrival. Usually we’ll go out for dinner at a low-key local place. Sometimes I’ll take a hot bath with Epsom salts to de-stress my muscles. Sometimes my spouse gives me a massage, or just holds me close and says things like “You’re safe” and “You did a good job today” and “All the hard stuff is done,” to let my nervous system know that it can finally relax. I get to bed early and usually feel much better in the morning.

 

Fellow chronically ill people, what helps you when you have to travel?

How I Track & Manage My Chronic Illness Symptoms in a Bullet Journal

Kate Sloan

I’ve long admired bullet journaling as a practice – like the art journaling and planner collage I did as a teen, it’s a way of making the everyday into something visually appealing and memorable. Life itself feels more beautiful, I find, when you document it in a beautiful way.

I was recently hit by a deep and recurring urge to return to this style of creative documentation. But, in particular, I’d been wanting to find a more concrete way of tracking my chronic illness symptoms. In seeking a diagnosis (which I’d been doing for over six years with no luck thus far), it can be helpful to have cold hard numbers to show to a doctor, so they can get a sense of how serious and ongoing the problem is. I’d experimented with symptom-tracking apps, spreadsheets, and digital notes, but had found it difficult to use these consistently enough to gather any real data. It was time for a physical solution.

While I no longer do much writing with an actual pen on actual paper, I’ve known for a long time that it can help unlock things in the mind that would’ve remained unexplored if you’d stayed in a digital medium. There are numerous scientists who have opinions on why this is; there are also cultural commentators, like Tom Hanks and John Mayer in the documentary California Typewriter, with their own views on why physically scrawling or hammering out a piece of writing can feel better and produce better results than digital alternatives. I doubt this is true for everyone, but it’s certainly true for me. All attempts I’ve made to journal on a computer, for example, left me feeling unable to dive as deep emotionally as I tend to when I let my thoughts meander through a notebook on my lap.

So I figured a similar principle might apply for tracking my various symptoms, remedies, ups and downs. I bought a bright yellow Leuchtturm1917 dotted journal (widely considered the best choice for bullet journaling aficionados) and some colored pens and highlighters, and got to work building my setup.

I should say upfront, what I’m doing is a very loose interpretation of what “bullet journaling” actually means. I’ve also pulled a number of ideas from various sources I found through Pinterest. Let’s talk about 3 of the main tools I use in my journal to help track and assuage my chronic illness symptoms:

Habit tracker on weekly spread

Lots of people do a “weekly spread” in their bullet journals, where they lay out the days of the week like a traditional planner, and write their commitments and appointments on the corresponding days. I got inspired by some of the journalers I saw online who were doing habit trackers as part of their weekly spread, so I decided to start doing my own.

Basically this is just a table with a list of habits I want to instill on the Y axis and the days of the week on the X axis. When I successfully do one of the things on my habit list, I fill in the square for that habit on that day. Pretty simple.

However, I continue to find it astonishing how motivating this practice is for me. The satisfaction of coloring in a part of the table and seeing the page get gradually more colorful… The ability to see, at a glance, whether I was good or less good at self-care during a particular week… The ability to triumphantly text my partner a photo of the days when I complete all of my habits… It’s all lovely.

I love that I can change up which habits I’m prioritizing from week to week; for example, if I’m having an active psoriasis flare-up, I’ll add “apply psoriasis lotion” to my habits list. The habits on my current page are: sunshine (get outside/feel the sun on my face), exercise, supplements, reading (at least 20+ minutes; must be a book, not an article or blog post), brush & floss, and intentional joy. That last one is the vaguest, but basically I’d define it as taking some time out of my day to deliberately experience something that makes me happy, whether that’s laughing my ass off at a Netflix comedy special, having a decadent jerk-off session in the afternoon, or cuddling my roommate’s cats while telling them how pretty they are.

I’ve genuinely gotten much better about sticking to these habits since I started tracking them in a journal. Would recommend!

Monthly health notes page

At the start of every month, I divide one page into 3 columns – pain, brain, and miscellaneous – and number the days of the month on the left side of the page. Then I make notes throughout the month about which symptoms I noticed and when.

This is fantastically useful for so many reasons. It gives me a record that a doctor might find useful. It gives me a clearer picture of how my menstrual cycle affects my symptoms. I can cross-reference this page with my habit tracker to see how various habits affect the way I feel.

In fact, I recently did exactly that, when I started having scary heart palpitations a couple days a week or so. I looked at my health notes and my habit tracker and discovered that the days my heart went haywire were all days that I had ingested both caffeine and a red panax ginseng supplement I’d recently started on. I did some research and found out that ginseng is known to increase heart rate for some folks – and of course, so is caffeine. I also found out through research that the antidepressant I’m on, Wellbutrin, increases some users’ sensitivity to caffeine. With all of this information available to me, I was able to make the decision to stop taking the ginseng supplement and limit my caffeine intake going forward. My heart palpitations haven’t returned since I did that.

I also like that the health tracker page gives me a place to brain-dump any random symptoms I might be experiencing that my hypochondriac brain thinks might be perilous. Looking back on this page helps me see that most of the stuff I was worried about turned out to be nothing (or, sometimes, turned out to be anxiety-related).

Self-care bingo

I read about this in a bullet journaling blog post and loved the idea immediately. Self-care is definitely an area where I need as much help as I can get, being a depressed and anxious workaholic prone to destructively high expectations for myself. I liked the thought of “gamifying” my self-care to make me more motivated to actually do it.

At the start of each month, I draw out a 6×6 bingo board and fill in each square with something specific that I want to do to reduce my stress level and increase my joy quotient. Some of the things repeat from month to month because they work consistently for me – like “take a bath” or “no social media for 3 hours” – while some get changed up.

This spread gives me permission to be nice to myself; self-care feels “productive” because I know I get to fill in a little square on my bingo board after I do it. As a person who has often beat herself up for reading or playing video games because those activities “weren’t productive,” I know that I struggle to do things just for the pleasure of doing them; there’s almost always some guilt and/or shame attached to that for me. I’m working on it in therapy (among other things), but until I figure out a better way to deal with that problem, this self-care bingo thing seems like a great stopgap.

 

Have you ever used a bullet journal to track or mitigate your chronic illness symptoms?

Disability Impostor Syndrome Fucking Sucks

Kate Sloan
I don’t know what’s going on in this picture, but I’m holding a spoon, so it seemed relevant.

This has been one of those chronic-illness weeks when I felt legitimately sick, legitimately disabled. It’s nice, in a way, to be able to banish the voices of impostor syndrome from my brain, if just because the rest of me is throbbing with pain. (Hey, that rhymed.)

I powered through that impostor syndrome in so many ways this week. I made accommodations and adjustments for my illness. I took Wednesday off work – a “Weekend Wednesday,” as CGP Grey would say – and mostly just laid in bed trying to breathe through the pain, distracting myself (sometimes well, sometimes not-so-well) with books and video games. I got as much sleep as I could, drank as much water as I could. I laid out my schedule for the week in such a way that I only ever had a maximum of two commitments per day, two “things” involving interacting with other humans, because this involves suppressing the visible signs of my pain and fatigue and is thus, in itself, exhausting.

I bought a cane.

There is a scene in the 1993 TV movie To Dance with the White Dog, a movie my mom and I have inexplicably watched together at least a dozen times, where the protagonist – an old man named Sam – finds that his physical condition has worsened to the point where he needs a mobility aid. One of his sons brings him a walker, and at first he refuses to use it, remarking petulantly that it’ll make him look like “a poor old man.”

I thought about this scene this week when I was limping around my apartment, needing to rest every few steps because of the reasonless pain stabbing through my knee. I’d considered buying a cane in the past for days like these, but I knew it would make me “look disabled,” and somehow I felt like I wasn’t “disabled enough” to deserve or warrant “looking disabled.” It was all too similar to how, when I was 15 and had just realized I was sometimes attracted to women (though still mostly attracted to men), I felt weird about wearing rainbows and bi pride flags on my person, because I worried I’d be misleading people somehow. By what? Flagging as queer when I am literally queer? How ridiculous.

It’s the same principle. If a cane would make it even 10% easier or more comfortable for me to get around, why not use one? Why not see if it could help more than 10%, even?

Would people see me on the subway or streetcar and ask me why I need a cane when I’m young and my body has no visible, structural issues? Would I then have to explain that I have a chronic pain disorder with no symptoms that are actually observable or provable from the outside, and that I don’t even have an official diagnosis? Or would I be filled with such rage and indignation that I’d have to limp off the vehicle to catch my breath and angry-cry in a subway station?

I started reading about disabled femmes-and-femme-adjacent-people who use canes. Gorgeous movie star Selma Blair has multiple sclerosis and walks with a cane. Canadian sex educator Kaleigh Trace was injured as a child and uses two canes. Local legend Claire AH, whose storytelling and matchmaking skills are unparalleled, walks with a cane after having some strokes a few years back. Witchy zinester Maranda Elizabeth uses (and writes thoughtfully about) using a cane. There is plenty of inspiration out there to be found.

As I flipped through FashionableCanes.com – what a website! – I found myself, again, wondering if I was just being dramatic, exaggerating my own symptoms to myself, even as a heating pad encased my throbbing knee and I popped yet another naproxen for the grinding pain in my hipbones, ankles, and elbows. I considered a cane of clear lucite, but determined its near-invisibility could be a drawback for a disability that’s already so frustratingly invisible. I contemplated stately wooden canes, the likes of which might’ve been carried by a well-to-do gentleman in Victorian England, but just didn’t think I could pull off something so sophisticated. Eventually I settled on a blue wood one with an ornate chrome-plated handle. It’s classic but a little flashy. It felt like “me,” or at least like the closest thing to “me” I could find while shopping for a product I still wasn’t convinced I really needed or deserved.

I had a phone call with my doctor booked for Friday morning, during which I planned to ask her to refer me to a local chronic pain clinic. My doctor, notoriously, is not great about my pain; she never seems to take it very seriously, and the sheer fact that I’ve been complaining to her about it fairly regularly for over 6 years and have not even received a definitive diagnosis speaks volumes. The night before the appointment, my partner Matt said, haltingly, “I have a proposal for you… and please feel free to say no if you want to… but I think we should do some medical roleplay so you can practice what you’re going to say to your doctor tomorrow.” A tear immediately slid down my cheek. My wonderful spouse knew that advocating for myself is not my strong suit, especially in medical situations, in large part because of the very impostor syndrome this entire post is about. It’s difficult to make the case that you deserve a diagnosis and a treatment plan when you don’t actually, 100% believe that you do.

So we roleplayed. Matt pretended to be my doctor and asked, “Are you sure you need to be referred to this clinic?” and “Why now?” and “Is your pain really that bad?” I struggled through my deep self-doubt and self-loathing to answer: “Yes.” “My condition is worse than ever and I need help.” “My entire body hurts, at a minimum 4-out-of-10 intensity (and usually higher), every single day of my life, so yes, it is really that bad.”

I found myself responding to these questions almost as if I was answering on behalf of someone else, someone whose pain I had no doubts about, whose struggle I knew for a fact was real, whose quality of life I felt should be better. I was able to tap into a rare sense of authenticity and deservingness. It was almost as if placing the order for the cane had cleared some cobwebs in my mind, enabled me for the first time to truly, deeply understand that I am actually disabled – however invisibly – and I deserve to have that acknowledged and addressed by the people whose literal job it is to acknowledge and address it.

So the next morning, when my doctor predictably said, “Are you sure you need to be referred to this clinic?” and “How bad is your pain, really?” I was prepared.

“I have done the research and I believe this clinic is the best option,” I replied, calmly, coolly. “It is not acceptable to me that I’ve lived with daily chronic pain for the past 6 years, and I’d like to seek a diagnosis and treatment.”

She filled out the referral form while I stayed on the phone. “Where is the pain located?” she asked, when that question came up on the form, and I replied, with total confidence (because it was true), “All over my entire body.” She did not argue with me. She did not dismiss me. She just filled out the damn form.

In every area of my life where I have experienced impostor syndrome – my queerness, my kinkiness, my success as a writer, and my disability – I have found that believing fully in my own legitimacy is often the first step to getting other people to see me as legitimate. It is unfortunate that this is the case, but it is useful to know. As soon as I firm up my convictions and declare to the world that I really am the thing that I really am (what a concept!), they tend to believe me. I know I’m blessed and privileged in this way, and that this unfortunately isn’t the case for everyone: racial healthcare disparities, trans healthcare gatekeeping, and other injustices still run rampant. But if my confidence in my own labels can convince even the occasional person that they are legitimate, that confidence is worth cultivating.

I have a feeling that the day I show up for my first appointment at the new chronic pain clinic, my new cane gleaming in my hand, I will feel like an utterly new woman – a woman who is unapologetically, unreservedly, and undoubtedly herself, disability and all.

My New Work-From-Home Setup, Part 1: Working in Bed

Kate Sloan

Lately I’ve been overhauling my entire work setup at home, and loving it. Seeing as I’m now fully self-employed and perpetually juggling a full docket of blog posts, client work, podcasting, and book-writing, it felt important to make some changes so my setup would be as well-tailored to my needs as possible.

I’m gonna do another blog post soon detailing the changes I made to my main workspace at my desk (I’m just waiting on my new monitor to be delivered!), but today I thought I’d tell you about another “workspace” of mine that I’ve also overhauled recently. Let’s talk about what I use when I’m working from my bed.

See, as a chronically ill person, there’s usually at least 1-2 days per week when I’m too achy, sleepy, and/or gloomy to sit at my desk for long stretches of time. On those days, I tend to curl up under my duvet, surrounded by strategically-placed pillows, for a supine work sesh.

My old bed-work setup consisted solely of my laptop (a MacBook Air) and a lap-desk from IKEA that keeps my computer from overheating on the duvet and also has a compartment where I can store my iPhone upright for easy access. However, my 13” computer is a bit bulky for this purpose, and I wanted a system that was smaller, sleeker, and more portable, especially since (in non-pandemic times) I travel a fair bit and don’t always want to bring my big ol’ lap-desk with me.

The main component of my new bed-work setup is an iPad mini 5. Mine is a 64GB model in space grey which I bought refurbished last year, having noticed that my chronic pain had gotten bad enough to warrant a smaller, lighter device for difficult days. In the months since, I’ve more often used it as a leisure device, for watching Netflix, YouTube, and (yes) porn – but it works quite well for professional tasks as well, because it’s fast, powerful, and versatile, and has a beautifully bright and vivid screen.

When I want to work on my iPad, I hook it up via Bluetooth to my pale pink Logitech K380 keyboard. I picked this keyboard because it’s one of the Wirecutter’s top recommendations, and I absolutely love it. The keys are pleasantly clicky-clacky, which I enjoy in contrast to my laptop’s hyper-quiet keys. I also love that this keyboard can be connected to up to 3 devices at a time, which you can switch between with a press of a button. This means I can use the same keyboard whether I’m typing on my computer, my iPad, or my phone. It’s quite slim and light, so it’ll be easy to throw it into a purse alongside my iPad if I ever want to get some work done at a café or another public place. The one thing this keyboard lacks, that I wish it had, is a slot for propping up my iPad so I don’t have to bring an iPad stand with me. I recently ordered a typewriter-inspired Knewkey mechanical keyboard which will do a better job of this when I need it.

Speaking of iPad stands, I do need one while working in bed, and the one I chose was a recommendation from my tech-nerdy spouse Matt. It’s the Yohann iPad mini stand, a gorgeous piece crafted from walnut. Matt recommended this stand for me largely because it’s designed to work well on soft surfaces, like a bed; its curved design enables it to keep my iPad upright at a workable angle even as I shift around in bed, adjust my pillows, etc. At $129 USD, this was a pretty hefty investment for something that simply holds my iPad up, but it’s 1,000% better than what I was doing before (attempting to prop up my iPad against a stack of pillows or books), so to me it was worth the dough.

The final component of my work-from-bed setup is my Adonit Mark stylus, which I bought because the Wirecutter recommended it and also because it comes in a stunning shade of turquoise. (I love this shade so much that it’s actually the exact color of my duvet cover, which unfortunately means I sometimes misplace the stylus in my bed due to how well it blends in!) At just $20, this was the least expensive part of my bed-work overhaul. A stylus enables me to “click on” things on my iPad’s screen without having to reach too far with my hands, which is suuuper helpful on bad shoulder/neck pain days.

I also have a 6-foot-long charging cable for my iPad, so I can charge it while I’m working no matter where I choose to situate myself in my bed. I am a big fan of extra-long charging cables in general, especially for chronically ill people, because unlike shorter cables, they don’t require you to choose between charging your device and staying in a comfortable position.

Software-wise, on my iPad I usually use Google Chrome for any in-browser writing (such as this blog post), Google Docs for articles and client work, and Scrivener for my books. These all sync across my various devices seamlessly, making it easy to move my entire workflow from my desk to my bed when I need or want to.

This is what’s working for me; I’d love to hear from other writers in the comments about what works for you when you write in bed!