Sometimes You Need Twinkle Lights, Not a To-Do List

Years ago, on a night I will never forget, I came home and could not make myself do the dishes.

The dishes were not even that bad. A regular evening pile. A few pots. A frying pan. The kind of mess a functional adult could handle in fifteen minutes.

I was not a functional adult that night. I was tired in a way that does not come from physical work. I was tired in the way you get when you have been holding too much for too long.

I stood at the kitchen counter and thought about all the productivity advice I had ever read. Just start. Just one thing. Just five minutes. Set the timer. Put on a podcast.

None of it worked. My body would not move toward the sink.

So I did something a little weird. I left the kitchen. I walked into the living room. And I plugged in the string of twinkle lights I had bought months earlier and never hung.

I did not hang them. I just plugged them in and draped them across the back of the couch.

Something in me softened. The light changed in the room. My shoulders dropped two inches. And then, without thinking about it, I walked back into the kitchen and did the dishes.

The dishes were not the problem. My nervous system was the problem. And no amount of pushing my way through the dishes was going to fix what was actually depleted.

Here is what I learned that night, and what I have been teaching ever since.

Sometimes the indirect path is the right one.

Sometimes the way through the dishes is twinkle lights. Sometimes the way through the inbox is a shower. Sometimes the way through the hard conversation is a walk first. Sometimes the way through the laundry is a candle and a cup of tea and a few minutes of nothing.

This is not procrastination, beautiful soul. This is wisdom.

Your nervous system is part of the equation. You are not a productivity machine. You are a whole person, and whole people need beauty and softness and shifts in energy before they can do the thing.

If you have been pushing through and getting nowhere, try the twinkle lights. Whatever your version of them is. Light a candle. Open a window. Play a song. Step outside for one minute. Put on the soft socks.

Then see what becomes possible after.

This is the kind of gentleness we practice together in the free Creating Space community on Facebook. It is a soft place to share your version of twinkle lights, borrow a little permission on a hard day, and be reminded that you are a whole person, not a productivity machine. Come join us at

🔗 facebook.com/groups/creatingspacewithcommunity

With so much love and gratitude,

Julie xo

P.S. What is your version of twinkle lights? Tell me what shifts your energy when nothing else can. I am collecting these.