Welcome to my Online Home!

Welcome to the personal web home of Mike Dolan Fliss of the triangle area in North Carolina, US, where I share stories about the practices of social justice change making, aikido, Zen Buddhism, and Getting Things Done.

It's also the online professional home of Aiki-Doing Consulting... providing social justice friendly tech consulting and web design (for nonprofits, small business and groups), individual PC and organizing support, and young adult time/to-do coaching.


Monday, August 27, 2007

Green Sites Galore - My job's cool

While the experience was a bit INSANE due to some last minute projects, I put up three eco-friendly sites today. Check out PlanIt Greener, Full Circle Planet, and Green Slam. Also, for a hoot, check out the old Plan It Greener and old Full Circle Planet. I hope you agree they're improved.

My site, however, is still printing crazy characters courtesy of blogger.  Please stop, google gods.  It's hard to read.

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Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Web designin' for some local green organizations

I love doing work for cool organizations!

Today I met with Shar of PlanItGreener, Full Circle Industries, BARD (biodiesel), and Total Green. I'm doing some overhaul of their websites.

It's nice to have a meaningful, social justice supportive livelihood. Of course, I'm also part destructive - I can't say I'm without blame at all or my work couldn't be improved on. But I *DO* like doing work for social justice friendly organizations. Community projects are nice, but it puts a smile on my face to be able to spend more of my day supporting wider movement work - which means aligning my "work" with it too!

Hopefully you'll seem some dramatic changes on those websites over the next month. Gotta earn my pay!

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Monday, July 16, 2007

So happy it'll make you barf. And rightfully so.

While I think I'll split the consulting page in two, currently some basic examples of webdesign are at the bottom. When browsing through my computer for website info, I found a site I never posted, but designed in flash... in my "insanely happy" time at Duke. That is, there was a particular 6 months of junior year when I was waking up to doing new things, and during that period of time, I designed this insane website. I think, even at the time, part of what was funny and made me smile about it was how over the top the flash was. I mean, daisies that say hello?

It's borderline manic.

But! still a good demonstration of some basic flash skills. I hope folks take it lightly. I do. Gets me to a general point about happiness, actually - there's a line in a sage francis song that is something to the effect of: "this won't necesarily make you happier... but will give you a greater range of emotion." One of the big turn offs for me from folks professing their spirituality (as in, shuts me down to want to ask them questions) is the belief or expectation that to be deeply spiritual means to be non-stop over-the-top happy. I don't think I have an interest in that, actually.

In one of my other online profiles, I mention something about enjoying smiling... but don't prefer it over being appropriately unhappy. I feel I've met some folks that, with great reason, mistrust the seemingly disconnected, fairy-tale-land happiness some folks professing a faith seem to front. Now, don't get me wrong, a lighter, more relaxed, easier-to-enjoy-life attitude may be a consequence of deep spiritual work, certainly. But to the exclusion of other emotions... like a stone-person with a plastic smile?

What's really at stake, to me, with putting on the happy face and attributing the mask to your spiritual life is the attitude of pretending to know what's at the end of the path while you're on it. Now, if you're on the path, and right where you are is happy, great. But who can tell for sure that they're not partly "faking it til they make it?" And nobody with sensitivity trusts a faker... well, except perhaps to trust their being themselves. But trust for the answers some folks suggest they have? Again, no thanks.

Not for me. Anybody else? If so, that's cool - and you might like the website I posted then. Hire me and I'll make you an even happier one, professing your eternal happiness.

peace,mike

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