About face

Hello, my name is Shawn, and I'm an emoticon addict.

It started with the small stuff, just a little tweak to take the edge off. I swear, no harm was gonna come to this sweet, innocent logo:

The realistic bits — the Fred Flintstone nose, the Charles Nelson Reilly glasses, the Opie Taylor T-shirt, eyes floating flounderish on one side of my head — would all grow back.

I just needed something to boost the mood for my blog posts, in case I wasn't making myself clear. A pick-me-up … or a bring-me-down. Whatever.

They were gonna be like little postage stamps, just to reinforce, "I'm outraged! …"

Or, "My bad! …"

Or, "WTF?!"

Or, "How dare you!? …"

Or, "Um …"

Or, "We are not amused …"

That was gonna be it. Just a nice little stash of emoticons. Use 'em every once in a while, that's all. Just when I really, really needed them. I was in control.

No, I WASN'T! Who am I kidding? It wasn't enough! It's never enough. I needed more! I needed them bigger! These just weren't doing the trick anymore.

None of these could say what I wanted about El Día de los Muertos, for example, because suddenly I needed to say something about El Día de los Muertos:

Then it was swimming. Swimming this, swimming that. You're sick of me talk about swimming, I know, but I couldn't stop myself:

Enough to make your eyes bleed. Look if you must:

I disintegrated. After a while, it lost all context (I was admiring swimmers from around the world here. OK?! What's so wrong with that??):

Then I found out the high was higher on the rocks:
 

When that lost its thrill, baseball came along. Damn you, Giants:

It got, well, ridiculous. I'm ashamed …

 

I'm not gonna lie. The Giants had me on a roller coaster for a long time. It was a gooooooood ride:

Then it was baseball and Halloween. I was getting into some dangerous mixing:

It wasn't long before I crashed:

The time came for serious self-examination:

And reflection … 

I went through the five stages of grief:

OK, it was mostly anger:

Eventually, though, I may have found a new way of life:

Keep your fingers crossed — I think … I may be … on the road to recovery:

 And I can quit anytime I want:

(Hey kids! Print this out and make your own Shawn face flipbook! The first hit is free!)