There was this wonderful episode of the sitcom Friends that ran during the height of that time the show’s writers had much of the country yearning for Rachel and Ross to get together; let’s see if you remember it.

Rachel was in a restaurant on a date with someone else, and her trials and tribulations with Ross were all she could think about —and talk about. She so wanted to be over it, but she just wasn’t. Her poor date was torn between being there for her and figuring out how to make a beeline for the nearest exit. He was perfectly cast. With very few lines to say, his facial expressions said everything we needed to know in reading his mind.

Finally, an increasingly tipsy Rachel borrows a cell phone from a neighboring table and leaves a voicemail for Ross telling him they “are over.” At the end of her dramatic speech, she ends with the line, “and that my friend, is closure.” I have never heard the word closure used in such a delectably satisfying way, and that episode sealed the deal with me on the fascination I have always had with the concept — delicious, savory, relief-filled Closure. I love checking things off as done. Especially BIG things.

So here we are in October, the month that begs for closure in whatever you had hoped to achieve in the year, for let’s face it: November and December are mostly about the holidays to come, that seemingly relentless line up of Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years Eve and New Years Day. School breaks, holiday parties, gift shopping and a rapid succession of other schedule changes annihilate the predictability of your routine. It’s supposed to be joyful, but somehow it becomes a cruel gauntlet that wreaks havoc on any sense of normality you tried to get to until this calendar parade started colliding with your psyche, stressing you out. No wonder most New Year’s resolutions are rooted in nothing more but emotional turmoil.

Here’s our goal for October: we are going for Closure with some key things we consider the unfinished business of 2005 so that we can totally and blissfully enjoy the holidays for a change. The holidays are goodness and light, and we should enjoy them, not dread them. We will allow October 31 and January 1 to be the bookends that they undeniably are to these holiday months, and we will be proactive about living them fully (i.e. gleefully) for a change.

Are you with me?

Now if like many others in our Ho‘ohana Community, you just got into some new learning initiative in September, hurray for you — keep going! This is not a contradictory concept, for I’m not saying you only have the month to wrap that up. What I’m suggesting is that you choose some other long-standing battle to win. In fact, in doing so, you’ll likely clear the deck and banish more clutter. (Remember ‘Opala ‘ole?) We are going to pick a major goal or two we’d set in this past year, and we are going to achieve it this month. We are going to check it off your list, and savor the delicious, delectable, soul-satisfying taste of closure with it.

Take a quiet half-hour today — no procrastination folks, we’re starting the day you read these words; print this if you don’t have time right now — and write a brain-to-written-page drain of the year’s goals that are still open-ended for you. In GTD jargon, write down your mission-critical open loops on the 10,000 foot Project level.

This first step is critical: believe me, writing them down and staring at them on the written page helps. But don’t go complete-collection crazy on me here; as sacrilegious as this may sound to you if you are a GTD devotee, don’t pull out that list you already have in @Projects. This is an exercise in which I want you to rely on the emotion-messages of your gut, your intuition, your psychic RAM (random access memory), and yes, those stress levels begging for some relief, for closure. Just open the steam vent of your internal pressure-cooker.

Now look at what you’ve written down and do these very important next steps:

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