Halloween 2020

The 2019 Halloween season was... rough.  I was working at a haunted attraction an hour outside of town, and the long hours and miles of late night highway driving was taking a toll.  I'd regularly get home at 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, catch a few Z's, then get up and go to my day job.  Between the haunt, my job, and my education, I had no energy left for personal hobbies.  

That year, I didn't make a single Halloween decoration, watch a single spooky movie, or carve a single pumpkin. I bought a pumpkin to carve, but every time I looked at it, I couldn't find the will to give it a face.  Eventually, it just rotted (a depressing poetic metaphor for my mind at the time).  The haunted attraction job, while initially a dream-come-true, had siphoned all of my Halloween spirit.  

Even Pumpkinrot, whose displays I looked forward to each year, had disappeared.  When no new haunt photos appeared on his website or blog, I felt like a kid on Christmas that woke up to find no gifts under the tree.*

I swore that Halloween 2020 would be different.  And it was.  I made time to watch my favorite Halloween media, carve pumpkins, bake some pumpkin bread, and even attended a couple Halloween parties.  But most importantly in my mind, I decorated.

I wanted something simple and nostalgic for myself; A mix of whimsical and spooky.  I cobbled together some simple scarecrows and bought those hokey white spiderwebs, plus a few orange string lights.  

What I created was a display that took me right back to my childhood trick-or-treating days, and simultaneously embraced my "matured" Halloween aesthetic

I don't have many photos from that display, but I'm still pretty happy with it.  

And that's enough.

*I am sure Rot had good reasons for taking his hiatus; Reasons he need not justify to his fans or anyone else.  At the time I feared my biggest Halloween hero was gone, and that disappointment was a twisting of the knife that had already been sunk into my spooky heart. But that isn't Rot's responsibility, and I don't hold any disdain for his disappearance.  I am, of course, simply glad he's back!