stefanie says

No other date make me panic more about the year coming to an end than 25 October.

It’s the “Guys, can you believe that it’s only two months till Christmas?!” date. Suddenly, you feel less bad about listening to Christmas carols for no reason. The fairy lights are starting to emerge, and the lovely white and golden gift wrapping paper that you can only use for holidays and weddings is already being sold at your average grocery store (I don’t understand why people would start gift wrapping in October, but okay.) 

25 October isn’t as close to the end of the year as say, Christmas itself - when the next year inevitably thunders towards you, and is there in a flash after a few days of fireworks and champagne. Even 25 November gives you a different sort of feeling - by then, your mind might already be too pre-occupied by thoughts of the holidays and turkey and log cake to do any grand dissection of the year that has passed and the time you have left to make it better.

But 25 October is close enough to the year end for it to be the right time to think about all the things you said you would do this year, versus the things you actually did. To think about everything you have left to do, and even any new feats you want to tackle. 25 October is pretty sly cause even though it’s close to the end, it affords you a good two months to actually make things happen. 

I know we’re close to 2012, and that it would be so much easier to just tell yourself that fine, you’ll just leave that one thing you really wanted to do or say or write or finish or accomplish this year till the next, since there’s so little time left in this one anyway, but hold up there - You still have approximately 67 days left to make this year a great one. 2011 still has so much more in store for us all - adventures and realizations and growth. 

I hope you spend (or spent) your 25 October making big plans for this year. Fill those 67 days left with as much ambition and hope and motivation as you do when you write your resolutions on New Year’s Day, and good things will happen, because you’ve set your mind to it. And by the end of this year, you won’t believe all the amazing stuff you’ve managed to do in the last two months, and then you’ll really have something worth celebrating with fireworks and champagne.