Finding Motivation

Why do we do it? What makes normally sane individuals spend countless hours in their garage/basement/workshops creating props of nameless horrors that are used once a year to scare the @#$% out of kids and adults, then spend the rest of the year mouldering in the corner of some dank basement?

I, myself, do it was a way of expressing myself artistically. I used to paint and draw a lot, before the kids came along. Afterwards, it was difficult to find the time for that sort of outlet. You can't leave a lot of oil paints and the assortied chemicals around toddlers and other small children. I tried isolating myself from them by painting in the basement, but that left me, you guessed it, isolated.

I had made some gravestones for the yard shortly after Mary and I had gotten married and for the longest time that was it. On Halloween, I would set out the stone and put some lights in the bushes and go out with the kids Trick'r'Treating, leaving a candy dish by the door. We tried to have a party for our friends, but that kinda fizzles once we moved down to Indiana (from Michigan).

A few years back, I found the myself on some of the now-prolific Halloween how-to sites that have since sprouted up like mushrooms. I was impressed with what people have done with very simple items and on a budget. Feeling inspired, I created the first version of my cemetery fence out of PVC pipes and furring strips. Rickety, but functional.
 
That Halloween, the kids were old enough to go out Trick'r'Treating by themselves, so I stayed at the house, put on a silly hat and had a cheap fog machine hidden in the bushes. This thing was so cheap that it would only fog when you pushed the button, so I had taken to startling kids with it as they came down the walk. I had more fun that year than anything else. I even had this on ToT refusing to enter my "creepy" yard. I ended up bringing the candy out to his sister!
 
Thus, I had found my holiday and my outlet for energy. It works out that I spend so much energy building and displaying my props, I don't much feel like I need to create anything else... At least until mid-Summer then the eye turns to the calendar and I start counting the weeks remaining until the next Halloween...
 
Note: the comic above is from my Webcomic: Tittivillus. I really need to work on it somemore...