Never Give Up. Never Surrender.

Hey folks, it’s time for another life update.

It’s been a while since I’ve been in the habit of making longer posts, but I’m going to try to do this again, especially as I try to use my websites more and social media platforms less.

I am sick again, but I feel like I am recovering quickly, so I hope to be back up & at it soon, particularly in light of all that’s happening.

I think it’s important to just speak plainly and clearly right now.

On a personal level, I am doing pretty well, all things considered.

My housing is covered for a few more months, I still am receiving EBT/SNAP/food stamps, I am still covered by Medicaid, and I still have caregivers coming weekly. I have a wonderful partner, I still own my own business even if I have no income right now, and I still am doing better health wise than I have in a long time after finishing my second round of TMS, getting the hysterectomy, and now getting off Cymbalta and other psych meds.

I am still struggling with my cannabis usage for various reasons including the fact that it’s impact on me is inconsistently beneficial, yet I can get pretty miserable without it still due to the IBS, dysautonomia, cPTSD, and other co-occurring conditions I am still attempting to manage and heal further every day as I can.

I am, for all intents and purposes, fairly safe and stable where I am in the Pacific Northwest currently, but we have to speak candidly about the prospects for a person like me doing what I have been given the state of affairs politically/socioculturally.

For quite some time now, several years, I have been very public and vocal about the criminalization and pathologization of my identity and way of being that exists in this world, and primarily in the USA since that’s where I am living at the moment.

I have spoken repeatedly about how autism is not what the DSM claims, how the DSM is not what it claims, how the entire medical industry is not actually here to help anyone heal from chronic, long term medical conditions as a whole because it’s more profitable to keep people sick with random, mystery side effects and illness symptoms. I have been talking about how autism is a threat to the status quo and the sociopolitical systems that are governing us all because of the autistic sociocultural immunity trait that allows us to see past the current rules and norms of a culture.

I have talked about how gender and sex are not what we were taught, how the binary is fabricated and made up as a tool to control us, how this all ties into the overarching structure of control and white supremacy in the global empire of genocide.

I have done my best to explain what’s happening and to urge people into action so that we can shift the course of events.

If you thought that I was overreacting in the past, now you need to eat humble pie. I don’t need you to suffer, but I do need you to own your arrogance and level of privilege. Only those with a specific form of privilege and positionality have the ability to ignore what’s happening and to not be aware of all of this.

I have been repeatedly pointed towards those in power and urged to tell them about my story and concerns and suggestions, but it’s always been to no avail. The moment those in power discover they cannot control or use me, they have no interest in me. They do not want to work with me or listen to me because I am telling them they are the problem and need to step down or help overthrow the system they’re benefitting from.

Autism is not caused by tylenol or vaccines.

Autism is not a disease, disorder, or illness.

Autism does not need to be nor CAN be “cured.”

Being transgender and queer is not a choice.

Being trans and queer is natural, not against nature.

Being nonbinary is natural and part of human history & culture.

White Supremacy Culture is baked into the foundations of the USA as a nation-state, and it’s always been this way. Things aren’t “getting worse”, they’re just getting worse for “white people” and those who had the privilege and positionality to ignore the horrors that have always existed since Europeans landed on Turtle Island.

No matter how many bigots try to erase and rewrite history and reality, there are more of us who know the truth, who side with love and life, who will be here after the fall of this capitalist hellscape.

The MAGAt regime WILL end. They will NOT win just as the Nazis failed in the end. Just as every tyrannical regime ends.

Now is NOT the time to put away your pride regalia nor is it the time to go into hiding if you have any amount of privilege and positionality to be able to come out en masse in solidarity.

Be wise, be cautious, be smart, but do not let your fear control you.

The moment we allow their cruelty to infect our minds, we lose.

I have been saying for a long time now that a civil war is coming.

If you haven’t realized it yet, it’s here.

This civil war is a continuation of the first one that was never truly fought for the right reasons and definitely won for the wrong ones.

This civil war is STILL about whether or not slavery is justifiable.

This civil war is ALSO about whether or not black and brown human lives are worthy of the same rights and protections as white ones.

This civil war is the moral and ethical determination for how far white americans have come and whether or not they’re able to understand now how their lives are interwoven with everyone else’s finally.

When your country’s actual governmental administration has declared the most vulnerable, the most marginalized, and the most in need populations and communities in your nation literal terrorists and enemies of the state, are you seriously going to sit there and continue to comply with ANY unjust and absurd laws?

How are any of you STILL complying with capitalism and imperialism?

How can ANY of you still go about your days and lives as though nothing is different and you can still act like you did before?

If you truly care about me, people like me, and those who are fighting for the right to live on a daily basis, DO MORE.

If you don’t know what more you can do, ASK!

A lot of what you can do is address whatever beliefs you have that you cannot do more… address the trauma, the pain, the disabling conditions that are under your control like identifying and rooting out the insidious and draining core that is white supremacist and colonizer sociocultural conditioning. The more we divorce ourselves from this toxic culture and mindset, the more energy we regain.

Going forward, I’m going to be focusing on how all the topics I’ve brought up over the past 5 or so years weave together such as neurodivergence, autism, chronic illness, developmental trauma, the social model of disability, intersectionality, disability justice, collective liberation, decolonization, unlearning whiteness, and so many other topics.

I am sending out and will continue to put out rallying cries for assistance in both financing and developing the new systems I’ve been talking about with my LLC, Gryffin Core, that I may be shifting into a grassroots collective and liberatory organization of lived experience educators and peer support specialists.

I know I cannot do this alone, but I need people who really understand what is at stake and have the capacity to consistently show up as they are able when doing this work.

This is no small thing. Nothing I talk about is small, but this time, this is really it. This is the call to arms & for collective action.

This is the start of us developing mutual aid systems and healthy, sustainable communities of interdependence here on Turtle Island, even in the midst of the MAGA Era.

We can do this. We just gotta not succumb to despair & work together.

“Never give up. Never surrender.”

No, this isn’t a MAGA quote.

This is a nerd/geek culture quote, and just like they’ve tried to take gaming and scifi from us, they are continuing to try to take everything else from us. We need to start standing up collectively against them and really begin to understand that they cannot take anything from us that we refuse to give them. This is our real power, and it exists within us all.

If we actually stand together, there is no reason why we cannot prevail. We got this.

Here’s to 2025, My 35th Year Alive!

Random thoughts on the Eve of my 35th birthday…

5 years ago today, I posted asking to confirm if the mayor of Bellingham had asked everyone to stay home as the COVID-19 pandemic was hitting Whatcom County and we were going into lockdown for the first time on a global scale.

I was still in the middle of my ‘Big Autistic Burnout’ episode that I went into right after getting my official Autism Diagnosis (ASD dx) in 2018, at age 28, after 6 years of attempting to be formally diagnosed after realizing I was autistic at age 22.

It was wild that 2020 was 5 years ago already.

It’s wild that people then were and still now denying that the virus even existed/is even real. No matter what your thoughts about autoimmunity and social responsibility regarding masking and vaccination, to simply outright deny things are happening is such a severe degree of delusion and mental compartmentalization of reality, it’s no wonder people have no empathy.

99.99999% of humans are not living in the same reality as me, nor seeing things in the same ways. Sometimes it’s like we’re seeing things in opposite ways. Since I’m usually the minority POV, I often end up being invalidated, dismissed, and gaslit no matter how hard I am actually trying to connect to the other person. They often simply seem to misunderstand/misinterpret the words I’m saying.

It’s literally terrifying and makes things ten times harder as an autistic person trying to socialize because I can’t figure out how people are likely to think or react anymore since everyone’s a wildcard with so much trauma, chronic illness, and dynamic disability, no matter their neurotype and whether they’re aware of these pathological conditions they’ve acquired or not.

The eerie parallel is all that happened last year and this year (which has not even been three months yet) is that now we have a fascist authoritarian dictatorship forming in the USA, and no I neither mince words nor censor myself because I obey none but myself, least of all janky algorithms created by petty, weak men.

The reason this is all so freaky other than the obvious reasons is because yet again we have not just active deniers and inverters of reality gaslighting and terrorizing other members of the population en masse, we also have the continued frozen and fawning privileged members who are too scared to take their heads out of the sand.

It’s quite possible they may not have the cognitive tools nor social supports needed to process what’s happening if they face it, but I would be far more in support of people collectively having a mental breakdown in the USA if it meant they stopping work for the corporate overlords and doing some deep introspection work instead of just externalizing their pain and giving into despair and destruction.

Without proper internal resources and external support, however, we know that the latter is more likely than the former, which is why I’m so hellbent on launching the GCN, Gryffin Core Network. I’m trying to develop both a for profit and not for profit sector of the GCN because while some of us are ready for a post-capital/ist world, not everyone is, and we have to respect everyone’s sustainable rate of change.

Only by meeting each other where we are at developmentally and mutually supporting each other as best we can when we can to so, will collective and deep-rooted systemic change occur. We change the whole by addressing the individual issues we experience collectively and sharing the burden of pain as a community.

So far, I have felt very unsupported and under resourced my whole life. I have lived both outside of the USA, been a member of non-American cultures, and lived in multiple parts of the USA. No matter where I’ve gone, there’s always been some issue of who I am whether only I was aware or not. At times, when I was younger, I was aware that I was feeling unsupported, but didn’t really know why or what was causing me to feel so sad and angry constantly.

As I grew up, I started to understand systemic discrimination.

At age 17, I was so inflamed by the injustices of the world (and the oppression I was facing without even knowing it at the time), that I chose to attend the JSA’s (Junior Statemen of America’s) intensive 4 week Summer school program at Georgetown University, so I took AP US Government and Politics before I became a senior in high school in Washington DC for fun. Even though I aced the course, I never took the AP test to get college credit because I became so incensed at how the legal and political system worked in the USA, that I turned my back on everything to do with government.

This was at age 18. I tabled for Obama, and then I never once voted because I became an anarchist. While I’d had anarchic and socialist leanings prior to that age, it wasn’t until I took the AP US Gov & Pol course and went to the hear senators speak at the capitol building that I realized how messed up it all was. I had initially been naive and hopeful, thinking that I could make change from within the system, but after I went that deep into the belly of the beast, I saw first hand that it was a system designed to chew well-intentioned people like me up and spit us out too depressed and downtrodden to do anything.

I did meet some amazing people in DC that summer, though, like my Palestinian friends who first taught me about the whole situation between Palestine and Israel. I remember crying my eyes out for several years after they went back to the Gaza strip and sent me videos of their neighbors and loved ones’ homes being bombed next to theirs.

Those friends joined my JSA group and wore their keffiyehs to the Israeli Embassy in DC. I remember the hard-hitting questions they were asking and how uncomfortable it was for everyone, but it really opened my eyes to what was happening. This was in the summer of 2007. I also remember that it these friends took me to try shwarma and hookah for the first time! That was pretty cool haha they also taught me some Arabic words from different dialects. That was probably my fave part of the experience.

Anyway, the reason I mention all of this is because even though some of my friends and followers online have known me my whole life, since before I started my public transition journey about 5 years ago, too, and while some of you have only met me more recently, none of you know all of the details of my life, and what makes me me or why I do the things that I do.

I know it can look really confusing online or externally when trying to “track my progress” or “follow my life’s work” and that’s sort of deliberate or intentional to a certain degree. I am working to consolidate and organize the content I share online to tell more of a cohesive and linear story to help others piece together each part of the journey I’ve been on and still am on.

Many have told me I should write a book, especially an autobiography. I’m still working on that. I’m just first trying to get my health well enough that my attention span can handle sitting down and concentrating on one thing for hours on end. These little rants and life updates I make from time to time do not require the same kind of brainpower or editing as a book would.

I’m doing what I can to use the tools available to get my story out there since that’s what everyone tells me to do. It’s just slow going. Thanks for the patience and support, y’all.

As of now, my story and journey is as follows…

I am Jax Gaius Bayne.
I am 35 years old.
I use they or he pronouns.

I am mostly transmasculine nonbinary or an agender transman.
I am demi/pan, grey ace-aro-flux, and polyamorous.

I am half-Latinx (Catalan-Cuban) on my father’s side, and white American on my mother’s side (mixed Northern European).

I am considered a “white-passing person of color/person of the global majority” but I definitely prefer the term POGM over POC since I have very little melanin and am highly literal haha I do use BIPOC a lot to emphasize the colorism and systemic racism in the USA since that’s where I’m currently located.

I am autistic and plural, and I consider these both disabilities (requiring accessibility accommodations & supports), but not disorders. These are also cultural and political identities like queer and neurodivergent. I also identify as neuroqueer.

I have various chronic illnesses that I do consider disorders (pathological and requiring treatment/support to heal), and while I am generally fine to talk openly about my health situation, I do not like when people feel entitled to comment their opinions of what I should do or how I should feel in response to what I share. That feels very rude and activates a lot of trauma responses from me.

One of the chronic illnesses I am struggling with is endometriosis, and while I have the surgery scheduled for April 15th, I’m still very nervous about it actually happening, healing properly, and feeling well enough to start working again afterwards. The work I want to do is not about money or profit, but getting stabilized enough to be able to support others even without a lot of money.

I am concerned about the state of affairs here in the USA and abroad. I am thinking of ways to ally myself with the tribal nations instead of the colonizer-settler regime, but it’s hard when I have hardly any privilege in this stupid capitalist system other than my skin tone and education level. Doing what I can to not betray my conscience, yet also be realistic and pragmatic when it comes to aiding in the reparations and redistribution of resources work.

It’s frustrating feeling like so many are only paying lipservice to the movements of decolonization, collective liberation, and abolitionism, yet don’t actually wanna get their hands dirty and do the hard work. I’m happy to do the work, I just need help getting well enough to do it again, and it’s hard to convince people I’m not well when they’re not in my body experiencing my daily pain load.

I’m going to keep trying to work on my websites, one of which expired I think cos I’m broke… uh oh… I’m going to keep trying to create the documents and resources to share and sell online. I’m going to keep on keeping on and trying my best, but boy is it weird and wild times right now.

I cried today on a business call. That was embarrassing haha.

I am so not okay, but still somehow surviving.
I think it’s due to all of you.

You’re keeping me alive because you care.
That’s all I need apparently.

So for those of you who still choose to support me and stick by me after all this, thank you. You’re what I’m most grateful for in life.

Here’s to my 35th year around the sun!
I’m going to manifest the best year of my life so far!

2025, here we goooo!!

Love to you all! ❤

Jax’s Not-So-Inner Monologue

The fact that my post calling for organization of protests and political solutions to the crisis we are facing in Whatcom county was removed from the Buy Nothing Sell Nothing Group tells me all I need to know about how hard it is going to be to uproot the white rich privileged complacency here.

And that doesn’t just apply to Whatcom County and Bellingham City, but all of WA state. I am shocked and appalled by the complicit silence y’all be engaging in. It is making me violently ill.

Where can I go?

Where can I find people near me who feel as strongly about what’s happening and who is also ready to act no matter how tough the job?

I refuse to join the colonizer-settler regime and will NEVER again swallow the koolaid that would have me believe it’s possible to reform a FIXED system from within.

Tell me, my people.

Please.

Where can I go?

Who will have someone as intense as me?

Someone as wounded as me?

Who can truly say they are willing and able to go to bat to support an intersectional minority such as myself who is seen as the literal Antichrist by so many in mainstream cultures around the globe?

Who can possibly shelter me without forcing me to conform to your ways, if only just a little?

Where in the world can I truly be free when I do not know how to care for myself by living on the land since I have been divorced and isolated from nature my whole life.

I keep asking high and low for help.

I keep telling everyone I meet that I am NOT okay living in a world that wants me dead.

I AM NOT ILLEGAL FOR EXISTING.

I AM NOT CRAZY FOR KNOWING WHO I AM BETTER THAN 90% OF THE USA AT THIS POINT.

I AM NOT A RADICAL FOR DENOUNCING AND REJECTING AN ATROCITY BEYOND RATIONALIZATION.

There is NO justification of capitalism anymore. It cannot exist without colonialism.

Look very, very hard in the mirror, everyone.

Your greatest fear lies not in the White House, but in what these coming days will reveal about who you actually are.

See me. Know me. I am not aligned with anyone nor anything but myself, Life Itself, and the GCN system I’m building.

I love and support many, as much as I can, but understand that I will never hesitate to cut out any and all connections at a moment’s notice so I can do what I need to survive, escape, and protect myself.

My life is, always has been, and always will be a dangerous one.

This is why I do not let most people get very close to me. To be close to me is to be in danger. I walk a loud path of overt defiance because it is all I can do to not betray my immensely profound need for authentic self-expression.

For some reason, the planet of Earth in 2025 still hasn’t come to understand how to accept and support someone like me despite my literally spelling it out for myriad folks innumerable times throughout my whole lifetime, which currently is about to be 35 years around the sun.

I am tired.

I am sick of being caught in the tangled webs of human nonsense.

All I want to do is build communities that are supportive and safe and protected for intersectional minorities so we can just heal from our cPTSD once and for all! I mean ffs! Is that so much to ask for!?

I am saddened each time I see another friend complete suicide and/or die from another means. I constantly question why I stay here, but then I know there’s no other choice.

I have to get through this.

I will never be the child my parents wanted, nor the person anyone wants really, but at the end of the day, that doesn’t matter. If I can learn to want myself enough to care for myself on a daily basis, I can convince myself that that alone is an act of defiance and resistance because hey, that’s one less minority gone from the USA, right?!

So yeah. I guess I’m finally understanding how to appreciate the spite and rage and bitterness that comes with revolutionary fervor. I suppose I never really knew that everything I was experiencing as a child was training me for this ultimate boss fight. I definitely don’t feel ready at all, but I’ve learned that that also isn’t the point.

Faith and hope and trust mean that I’m gonna take that leap no matter how terrified I am and figure out how to build myself wings on the way down. That’s my life. Maybe one day I’ll learn to build the wings before leaping off of the cliff, but for now, I’ve never really been afforded the privilege of having that ability since everything is still happening constantly at all times, and there’s never a break from anything ever. I cannot escape my mind.

My mind is somehow linked to the collective unconscious of all living beings but humans are the loudest, and god, are we suffering something fierce. It’s making my whole body sick, and my mind fragment like fractals so I can barely function on a daily basis.

I sure do feel like a canary in a coal mine right now, and these fumes are so toxic. I’m dying slowly, and it’s starting with the mind collapsing again. Maybe we all are. I don’t know. It’s hard to feel the separation between me and others sometimes, which is why othering is such a bizarre concept to me.

I don’t think I can get a passport with gender X now so leaving the country will be hard.

I can cross into Canada or Mexico with my EDL, but is anywhere gonna be better?

I’d rather go south than north, but ugh.

I’d rather just wake up Whatcom County or take it by storm.

One way or another.

Something’s got to give already.

Summer 2022 Update

Hello, friends!

I’m slowly getting to a place where I can start being more regular about these life update posts! I’m creating more media content again, and I’m happily involved in compiling research for my theses. I finished a quarter at Whatcom Community College with a 4.0 GPA and the title of Vice President of the Neurodiversity Club despite struggling a lot of the time. I’ve started a few new psychopharmaceuticals and have also been on testosterone for over a month now, so all in all, things are going pretty well aside from my self-care & executive functioning, but I’m working to improve these little by little as I can.

Living at the dorms has been interesting as a disabled 32 year old autistic enby. It’s both been great and challenging. The biggest issue is how steep the rent is. I get that they make money off of international students from wealthy families because they have to since we’ve had serious budget cuts from enrollment being down, but I still wish they’d consider how to better accommodate disadvantaged local students, too. I’m always brainstorming over new ways to advocate for minorities who are struggling because otherwise both I and others like me won’t be able to accomplish our academic goals. I will probably write a whole post about how difficult it is to be a neurominority in Academia, but for today’s post, I’m just checking in to let you all know about my current projects.

I think I mentioned in another recent post that a couple of projects I’m working on include a Supporting & Accommodating Neurominority Students training module for faculty & staff at the college, a write up on why I believe it’s important for the college to offer group therapy and neurosomatic modalities for trauma processing and daily life coping skills given the state of the sociocultural climate right now, and I was asked to participate in a Faculty Education Workshop to share my experience as an autistic student at the college. There’s a lot of really exciting stuff happening, and I just feel super honored that I’m finally at a place where I can be doing all of this work, even if it is still extremely exhausting for me as a chronically ill disabled person.

On a coursework level, over the summer, I decided to participate in two learning contracts while I do work study at the media center on campus. One of the classes is with the Horizon (WCC’s student led newsletter) team, which I’ve decided to join, and we’re creating a podcast to bring awareness and information regarding contemporary issues. It’s all very exciting to me to be back in media production. The second learning contract is with my supervisor at the media center so we can create video tutorials on how to use the equipment and software we have for students & faculty. It’s interesting because while I’ve decided to start focusing more on my neuropsychology research, I’m also getting pulled back into the media and art world, which I’m loving.

I’ll be doing my best to keep posting updates and samples of the work I’m doing as I can, but for now, I just wanted to touch base, let y’all know I’m thinking of you, and send my love. Hope you’re having a great summer, or whatever time of year it is where you are! Be well! Hare Krishna! ❤

On Loving Those Who Hurt Us

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.”

― Franklin D. Roosevelt

There comes a time when we must face the pain of our needs going unmet. We have so many fears surrounding the concept of our needs going unmet in our lifetime. Needs are not just physical like food, water, shelter, safety, etc. Needs are also emotional and mental such as feeling loved, accepted, valued, respected, and seen. When the emotional needs are going unmet, we can become angry from the weight of the pain that we carry around with us. It may feel unfair that we should need to shoulder such a burden. However, it is our burden alone to bear and while we may ask for help carrying the weight, if we try to give it away without consent, this can cause even more problems that can lead to even more pain.

Life is a balancing act that begins with survival and ends with transcendence, if we’re fortunate. In order to transcend the material limitations of our physical bodies, we must come to learn that even though our mental sphere is impacted by the material phenomenon, it doesn’t have to be dependent upon it for happiness, fulfillment, and satisfaction. The mind is much more than just an invisible projection of reality created by our brains. It exists on its own independent of the body. The neural connections in the brain are the roads that the mental activity walks along when we are embodied, but the mind is not bound by these neuron cells and synaptic connections. When we can truly understand this, we will see that what we thought we needed to be provided for us by other humans, we can provide for ourselves in our own mindscape.

There are a few requirements for developing the ability to become self-sufficient in one’s mind, and thus in the physical plane of consciousness. The biggest one is courage, but not fearlessness. Courage means that we may still be afraid of some negative or adverse consequence, but we choose to try to do something anyway. We can choose to have the courage to imagine what it would be like to feel fully satisfied and content even when we feel that our needs are going unmet. We can choose to imagine what it would take for us to be happy even when our needs aren’t met. We can choose to find ways to look lovingly upon those who have hurt us even if we are afraid this may cause harm to us somehow. We can choose to be brave enough that the possibility of harm, pain, damage, injury, etc. aren’t deterrents any longer. We still exercise caution and common sense to not put ourselves in harm’s way physically or deliberately, but we understand that sometimes when we are unlearning a lot of the harmful and limiting beliefs and thought patterns we’re stuck in, pain and perceived harm/injury may come as a part of the healing process. At times, it’s absolutely necessary for things to get worse before they get better. This isn’t a bad thing, even though it can be very painful & scary.

At the end of the day, we are an eternal spirit soul that exists independent of physical body and mind. No harm can come to us truly. This is simply an illusion. Whatever material needs are going unmet aren’t impacting us on the soul level. The material needs going unmet is simply an aspect of karma that exists to help us learn some lesson about how to tolerate, respect, and be humble in regard to our true identity and position as part and parcel of Infinity. When we come into connection with the Source of Infinite Reality, we feel we want for nothing. Material needs mean nothing to us at that point. We feel we can endure any amount of pain and suffering because our inner heart of heart’s true desire has been attained. We are in relationship with our True Beloved. The most devastating thing in existence to us is nothing other than losing that connection with our Love. We know that as long as we have this loving sentiment, we have everything.

In this state of loving connection, we have infinite love, infinite patience, trust, mercy, compassion, and kindness. We see all of the souls as equal and deserving of love. We know that whatever their karmic situation is, that’s their lesson to learn, but we can still have empathy and adoration for them regardless of whatever is occurring on the relative plane of existence. It is temporary and not a reflection of who they truly are on the spiritual level. Sometimes when we experience pain and it seems to us to be caused by something another soul is doing, this is an opportunity to reflect on how all the souls simply act as mirrors to one another. We are reflecting each other back at one another.

If we see something we dislike in another, it’s typically because we too have that anartha still and need to offer it into the sacrificial fire. In these moments of pain, we can choose to see past the relative circumstances of the “story” and gaze upon the spark of the Divine within that soul we are in a difficult situation with materially. We can see how they are in a dormant state of slumber on the soul level, conditioned by the material energy, and operating on a sort of autopilot in a virtual reality existence. In these moments, we can choose to feel empathy and compassion for the fact that their real self is not fully awake and understand that they are simply a walking set of karmic repercussions continuously looping the cycle of action-reaction, action-reaction, action-reaction. These individuals aren’t even aware they’re making choices so they struggle to accept responsibility for the consequences, especially unintended ones, of their decisions.

In the situation where we are having to tolerate the reactive behaviors of the dormant souls, it can be easy to allow ourselves to get sucked into their drama. We don’t want to do this, however, because it’ll only cause us to accrue karma and get stuck in the dormant action-reaction cycle as well. Instead, we can choose to take a somewhat detached and aloof position towards what is going on with others internally and externally choose to express love and acceptance toward this suffering person. Even when we are being hurt and lashed out at by others, we can choose to feel compassion and mercy toward this soul who is unaware of what they’r

they’re doing on some level. We may have a fear that if we choose to be empathetic towards these slumbering souls, we may end up getting into a dangerous situation materially such as not having our mental-emotional needs met. Part of being a faithful and devoted soul, however, is to call upon the Lord and trust that we shall be provided with the ability to weather any storm and endure any hardship with Him at our side.

If we walk with God, we shall have nothing to fear on any level, but even if we still do have some fear, when we know that God is Good, we can choose to be brave, and ask for the ability to love and show mercy to those who may not deserve it karmically speaking. This is the mark of a true vaishnava, a true servant of the Lord. No matter what is occurring on the mundane, relative plane, the vaishnava remains resolute and transfixed in the belief that God is Good and the environment is always favorable. Every wave is favorable, even if it brings pain & hardship because it’s a karmic lesson helping us to see our anarthas and learn how to grow as a servant so we can surrender further. It is a loving opportunity to reconnect in the midst of a battlefield. Just like a warrior, however, we must have courage to do our duty and choose to love all of the Lord, which includes every single soul.

Love is a choice. Love is an action. Love is an ongoing process and state of being that is attained and maintained by constant, consistent, resolute decision making to be brave and not allow fear to come between us and our Beloved. We cannot hope to surrender and be in constant connection to the Source of Love if we aren’t willing to pay the ultimate price, which is to sacrifice our false ego and separate self-interest, especially on the material level. If we want God fully, we must ask for Him by Name. If we call out to Him and chant Mahamantra in our moments of pain and weakness and despair, He will be there.

We must say, “Dear Krishna, I cannot find it in me to have the strength to be brave right now, so please, fill me with your Love so that I may once again regain that courage to reflect that Love into the world at those who hurt me.” Fighting fire with fire will never work. Hate begets hate, love begets love. We must always fight with love if we hope to rise above the wheel of samsara and finally exit the transient shadow domain of the Lord, which exists for our correction and adjustment of inner vision. If we search our heart of hearts and ask ourselves what we truly desire and find that the answer is Krsna, then we have but one option: to choose to develop the courage to Love.

Hare Krishna! ❤

2022 Life Update

Well! It has been a while! Hello, friends! How are you all doing?

It sure has been a wild few years. In the midst of all the chaos, I chose to retreat within myself, but not in the self-isolating way I normally have done. Instead of being avoidant, I chose to be present with myself, with the fear, with the pain, with the grief, with the anxiety, with the depression, etc. I am happy to report that choosing a new way of existing has really turned things around for me.

Here is brief summary of what’s been going on with me…

I came out as transgender and started my nonbinary transition journey. I changed my name & gender legally (I’m now officially an X-man in the state of Washington!), and I underwent top surgery, so I no longer have breasts! It was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life. I tried to go on testosterone for a month, but it ended up resurfacing a lot of the trauma from first puberty, which didn’t feel safe at the time, so I had to stop. I hope to try again as soon as I get stabilized on my new meds. I am now taking Cymbalta for my nerve pain and depression and Rexulti, which is a very new medication and quite expensive, so I’m really glad my insurance has approved it for at least 6 months.

I was denied for federal disability income, and they closed my case, so my disability advocate and I are having to start over from the beginning. Because the federal government determined I’m not disabled, the state government is also trying to revoke the services they’re providing me with through the ABD (Aged, Blind, and Disabled) program, so I have a hearing this coming week to try to explain why just because the federal government doesn’t think I’m disabled, I still am and need state support. It’s a whole thing that is very exhausting and disheartening, but I gotta do what I gotta do to survive in this ableist and discriminatory system we have in the USA. I have some new providers, a new caregiver, and things are looking up in terms of the insights I have received regarding what’s going on with my health, but it’s still a long road ahead before I get to a point of balance with it all, I think.

I’m also back in college & working again for the first time in years. I’m attending the local community college to finish up my math & science requirements before transferring to the local four year university to design my own major in BCN (Biopsychology, Cognition, and Neuroscience). I had a lot of math trauma growing up, but I’m starting over from the basics, and it’s going a lot better this time around. I am having a bit of trouble keeping up with everything, and I’m only in the fourth week of the quarter with three very “easy” classes. I picked up a work study job at the media center & makerspace, which is super awesome because I get to learn how to use all kinds of amazing creative software & hardware. I also get to work with some awesome people. I feel very fortunate. In addition to taking 12 units (full time student) and working around 16 hours per week, I accepted the position of interim Vice President and Accommodation Facilitator for the Neurodiversity Club at the college. I am also involved with the Latinx Leadership Club, and the QTPOC (Queer & Trans People of Color) Club, so I’m pretty busy and trying to just make sure I stay on top of everything without overextending myself and burning out again.

Finally, I moved into my own studio apartment “on campus” in the new dorm/residence hall, which is so nice. I love having my own space, but I definitely learnt that without a caregiver, everything falls apart super fast for me. I need to try to get more hours approved at some point. While there’s a ton more I’d love to say about how I’m doing and where my mind is at lately, for now, I’m going to end this post here so it just is a brief life update. I can do a more in depth reflection on life later.

Sending love to you all! Be well! ❤

Cosplay Portfolio

Jax Bayne as Suicide Squad’s Harley Quinn – PC: lonewolfpixels

Here’s my take on Harley Quinn from the first Suicide Squad film, which was my first cosplay ever.

I chose this to challenge myself because I’m asexual & transmasculine with a lot of trauma regarding being sexually objectified in a feminine way. Also, I’m afraid of cameras/performing/attention and such things so I started modelling as a way to work through these issues. I just did this for fun/therapeutic reasons, but it yielded monetary results, new friends, and rad experiences as well as a trip to Boston, put up in a hotel with my partner at the time, and access to a bunch of new games.

I’m glad I did it, but from that experience alone, I decided I didn’t want to be a professional cosplayer or model or streamer or basically anything like that. I kinda like to keep my work and play separated so that I never lose my inspiration to create because PDA makes it tough for me to do things that are obligatory, even if I enjoy the activity or find it rewarding or something. It’s just too draining for me otherwise cos of my chronic pain & fatigue issues.

Frankly, I was incredibly uncomfortable in this cosplay and whenever I’d wear it somewhere, I’d end up wrapping the jacket around my waist to try to “cover up” cos I didn’t like people staring at me, despite how very “LOOK AT ME” the outfit/cosplay screams. I think that’s sort of why I chose it. I like to challenge myself, but sometimes unpleasant consequences happen as a result.

Banner Saga 3 Cosplayers at PAX East 2018

I seriously love the Banner Saga games & cannot recommend them enough. The development team is a bunch of lovely, awesome people as well & I’m still friends with a few of them today.

It was a really cool experience meeting all of these really talented professional cosplayers, too. I felt like a total imposter around them cos my costumes were so simple compared to theirs. I was pretty in awe that I had the opportunity to work alongside such amazing people. I’ll always be grateful for this opportunity.

One of my favorite memories from this experience was the first time I was streaming the first Banner Saga game, the creative director of Stoic Studio, Arnie Jorgensen, turned up and was chatting with me while I played the game. I had no idea who he was, but one of my viewers was like, “Oh hey, are you ARNIE?” I felt really dumb, but then immediately super honored that he had taken the time to come check out my stream. I ended up having such a great time playing those games. They were seriously moving, gorgeous, and genuinely fun to play. Hands down, they’ll always be one of my favorite video game series.

Jax Bayne as Indulekha (middle), a moon godlike OC from Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

I chose to be a Moon Godlike original character from the Pillars of Eternity game series because I thought they were so ethereal, otherworldly, and ominous. I chose to do extremes, exaggerating the features with extra dark skin coloring that’s unnatural and I added shimmer to make it iridescent in the light so I didn’t seem human. I chose to be darker than their character creation features allowed for because I always like to create characters that are “outsiders” for some reason, maybe because that’s always how I’ve felt.

People at PAX East got really stunned by this cosplay. They’d literally stop walking and stare at me and ask to take photos of me. They said it was REALLY creepy/intimidating, which was cool, but I could barely see with the white out contacts. Thankfully, my partner just led me around the convention through the throngs of people.

It was cool because I got to be Oddleif the first day and then my OC who I named Indulekha (Moon in Sanskrit) the second day and the people at the Versus Evil booth didn’t recognize me in the moon godlike costume. They were like WOAH when I said it was me. That was a really fun experience.

If I didn’t have to make my own costumes, I might be more into the idea of being a professional model or cosplayer, but only if I can do androgynous or masculine looks most of the time. I’m kinda over playing “feminine roles” since they don’t feel comfortable or natural to me. Regardless, it was still a great experience to get to appear as an image of someone I feel is way more badass than my real life self. That’s the beauty of roleplaying games, cosplay, and all that fun nerdy stuff I love to do, but preferably with less stress & more help as a disabled person with fine motor skill issues, demand avoidance, chronic fatigue, & executive dysfunction!

Lone Wolf Pixels – Harley Quinn Photoshoot

Miscellaneous Harley Quinn Photos

  • Jax Bayne SSHQ YnnDrox 2017

More PAX East photos

  • Moon Godlike Cosplay (Original Character Design)
  • Oddleif w/ the Stoic Studio Crew at PAX East 2018
  • Banner Saga 3 Cosplayers at PAX East 2018

A Quick COVID-19 Note

Just because I’m not posting much about COVID-19, doesn’t mean that I’m not holding those who have suffered & died in my heart. It’s hard to believe that more Americans have died from this virus than were killed in World War I. Over half a million deaths have been reported from around the world. That’s pretty intense. We’re all scared & suffering together, so in a way, despite being locked in our homes, we’re more unified as a species than ever before.

I hope we can learn from our past mistakes & try to take hygiene, sanitation, healthcare, wellness, and social responsibility a bit more seriously going forward. No matter what the “powers that be” may be saying, it’s a good time to think for ourselves about what’s truly the most ethical & moral way to behave now. It’s time we look into our hearts & allow our compassion to guide our decisions in life again. We’re all in this together, so we have to look out for each other. This pandemic showed what can happen when we’re allowing ourselves to be divided instead of united.

All I know is that I don’t want to have a hand in anyone else dying or suffering from COVID if I can help it, so I’ll keep social distancing, wearing my masks, and quarantining for as long as is necessary. Life is hard for those of us who remain, but at least we still have a life so let’s do what we can to protect it & each other. Let’s weather this incredibly formidable storm, persevere, and come out stronger & wiser because of it. We can survive this. I send my love & well wishes to you all.

Stay safe, dear friends ❤

Life Goals

All I really want in life is to become a genuinely good, nice, kind, caring, productive person.

I then asked myself why it’s so hard for me to meet the standards I set for those categories. Then I started wondering if it was okay to still celebrate who I am as a person right now even if I’m a less than ideal person by my own standards? No one meets my standards because they’re impossibly high, so if I don’t condemn others not meeting my standards, why do I have to condemn myself for not meeting them if I can acknowledge that I’m not a finished product. I’m a work in progress. I’m cookies still baking in the oven. We all are. That’s literally what it means to be ALIVE. Even when you’re dying. Til the last breath we breathe, we are STILL unfinished works in progress.

So why can’t I let myself just be okay with where I am, accept it, and simultaneously continue to striving to improve myself until the moment I leave my body? And if I’m not meeting my ideal standards, why can’t I allow myself to still be happy even if I’m falling short of my goals and just enjoy the journey, too? Do I think appreciating the hardships in my life is somehow going to lessen my ability to be recognise what is truly worth aspiring for?

Do I think not attaining that which I work for will somehow make me a failure? Even if it does in the eyes of others, doesn’t not doing anything at all make one more of a failure? Even if I don’t care what others think, won’t I be falling short of my own bare minimum standards? If so, do I need to berate & punish myself for not meeting my own IDEAL standards? Is it a sin to not get that which you endeavour toward? Isn’t that part of what “not being attached to the fruits of one’s labour yet still doing one’s best & giving one’s all in every moment when doing their duty in life” means?
Why do I have to set myself up to fail all the time? I know I’m afraid joy, happiness, change, comfort, love, kindness, etc., but can’t we at least be a bit more conscientious about what’s going on? Can’t we just be honest with ourselves, allow ourselves to talk about the deeper levels of what’s going on inside? I guess that would require us to feel & feeling is we’re all afraid of. That’s why we need to be constantly distracted. We’re afraid of feeling anything aside from sensory overloading hyper stimulating mildly dissociative emotional experiences, because then it becomes a thrill or a ride. It’s like a one person drama that we are the protagonist of and it is literally happening inside of ourselves. This is why we’re little thrill seekers, or gamers, or gym addicts, or any other form of addict.

So why are we so afraid to feel? We felt something bad pretty early on. While experiencing something that made us feel super negatively very early on in our lives, coming across things that make us feel uncomfortable or unpleasant sensations in some facet or another will happen again & again throughout the course of our existence. This is a part of life & even in Utopia/heaven, we won’t be able to avoid “less than ecstatic feels” because part of being an individual means having fully unique preferences, perspectives, paradigms, etc. to every single other living entity & thus it is inevitable for someone to encounter at least one thing they dislike/disagree with in practically every single situation in life.

From what we like/dislike to what we think is wrong/right, what we think is pleasant/unpleasant sensorily, our aesthetic preferences, our political views, literally every single aspect of who we are together, there is always going to be a percentage of crossover/mutual agreement/similarity between your preferences/attributes and another living beings. We will obviously often become close with those who are more similar to us, but we sometimes become very close with those who are totally different than us is more ways than most.

Ultimately, the one unifying, underlying aspect that binds us all together, all life forms, humans and otherwise, is that we are all perceivers – protagonists in our own subjective, unique narrative of our perspective of reality. We all are unique, totally different in terms of the sum of all of our parts being fully distinct to any other living entity’s being by definition that it’s a separate being. Just like 1 and 2 are different, each living soul, each human, each dog, each bee, each tree, each flour plant, each amoeba, etc. all are a finite unit of consciousness perceiving & interacting with one particular aspect of infinite reality and that experience is what defines our existence, nothing more & nothing less.

Perhaps the feeling itself is that sense of emptiness, hollowness, aloneness – the void that we’re always looking to fill with some sort of dopamine spike like eating junk food or dating or playing games or going on social media or binge watching TV shows or talking at conferences or going sky diving or whatever it is in the moment. When the feeling of disconnectedness is so deep, so pervasive due to adverse childhood experiences, especially within the first year of life & in utero, the chance of addiction can increase, and this can be an addiction to anything that releases substantial dopamine in our brains. We start to chase after it, oversaturate/overstimulate ourselves, burnout, shutdown, and check out. We’re a species that’s all landed ourselves in traumatised burnout/meltdown/shutdown mode because we’re overstimulating ourselves to distract ourselves from what we’re feeling, which is disconnected.

So the reason question is not how can we come up with even more ways to distract ourselves from the pain of being disconnected like we have been for so long in our materialistic, consumeristic, capitalistic culture, but rather, what can we do to make ourselves become reconnected? What things can we stop doing that perpetuate the feelings of disconnection, and what things can we start doing/do more of that help us feel more connected? And finally, how can we help support our fellow living beings to do the same? I think that’s the real question of how we can change the world through empathy, love, patience, tolerance, humility, respect, compassion, courage, understanding, and kindness.

It’s possible. We simply have to become the change we want to see in the world by prioritising our own self-betterment & self-care (not in that order). By changing the code we’re choosing to run, we will impact the code of those we come into contact with. That’s memetics for ya! And it can be used for good, healthy, wholesome, positive changes just as much as it can be for the reverse, so let’s do our part in helping to rewrite the narrative from the comfort of our beds & couches at home! Let’s change the world without even having to leave our houses! There’s no reason not to. What have we got left to lose by simply trying? ❤

Slow On The Uptake

“What do you think ‘boys will be boys’ means if men are so good at neutralising their hormones? It’s not the convenient alibi for sexual assault that so many people are so desperate for it to mean. Do you know what ‘boys will be boys’ means? It means we are not preparing our boys for the real world. It means we know. We know that boys are at the mercy of their hormones. We’re just culturally incapable of holding them accountable for their actions, so we hold women accountable.”

Hannah Gadsby

I just watched both Nanette and Douglas on Netflix yesterday, and I couldn’t stop posting quotes from them on my Facebook page because although they were both technically comedy sketches, the subjects that Hannah Gadsby touched upon were super important & the way she brought these matters up was truly masterfully done. She helped me to better understand perspectives I never thought I’d really get on any substantial level because I didn’t relate to them by putting them into contexts & phrasings that made sense to me. Sure, I’ll never fully understand the things that I don’t personally experience, but at least now I can empathise & know why these subjects are so meaningful to others who do experience them more than I ever could before. I’m grateful for that.

The quote above is the best explanation of the patriarchy, misogyny, and feminism that I’ve ever heard because it caused me to have a paradigm shift about subjects that no matter how much I’d tried to self-educate on, no matter how much those I knew (or didn’t know) tried to explain things to me so I could finally “get it” on a deeper level, I never really could. I intellectually understood on the surface level what these things were, and could acknowledge that I’d experienced a little bit of them first hand, but I struggled to understand why certain things would set people off the way they would. After watching these comedy sketches, however, I feel like I am actually, finally, starting to understand now in a way I never really did before due to being transmasculine non-binary & autistic, so not only have I always been pretty out of touch with most sociocultural norms/systems, I don’t even perceive things through a female lens despite what I look like & how I’m treated by others. I can’t fathom what it feels like to be female any more than a cisman can.

What I just want people to know, however, is that I’m not intentionally being insensitive when I seem to dismiss certain subjects. It’s that I literally don’t see/experience the things that are being discussed, so I straight up just don’t understand what people are talking about. It’s like if you saw a pink elephant and started talking about it to me, but I couldn’t see the elephant myself. I’d be incredibly lost & confused and not be able to really relate or participate in the conversation at all. This has happened time & time again over the course of my life and caused me to experience a great deal of confusion and distress because I didn’t know that I wasn’t able to see/understand the thing that was being talked about. I really want people to understand that if it seems like I’m ever dismissing, invalidating, or responding in a way that seems like I’m lacking in empathy to something you think is a super important & serious issue, it’s a good bet that I genuinely just don’t even understand what the issue is all about, and am feeling confused which can cause me to become frustrated & emotionally charged. Sometimes I’ll have a lot of difficulty with certain subjects because my lack of understanding makes me feel so distressed that I’ll literally start crying because I really DO want to understand. I DO want to know why people are so fired up about things I don’t get just like I’d want people to take the time to try to understand what makes me upset, too.

I’m 30 now. I have lived my whole life as someone who has been treated as female. I’ve never known anything different, but I still didn’t really get feminism and why it’s such a big deal to people because when others were cruel or insensitive to me or if things didn’t go my way, I just thought it was because I deserved it or because the other person was simply choosing to be a jerk to me in the moment. I’ve realised that I’ve internalised a lot of hate & abuse for one reason or another, but being autistic means that I lacked the sociocultural context to understand why people did/said what they did to me. I STILL struggle to understand neurotypicals. I’m still constantly trying to learn more about why people do what they do because if someone isn’t neurodivergent, doesn’t have some form of mental illness, nor some other form of shared cultural context with me, I really have a lot of difficulty attempting to relate to them. And believe me, I do try. HARD.

Here’s the thing about me though, friends. Just because I don’t relate to something/don’t understand something, doesn’t mean I am not open to learning about it if you can find a way to explain it in terms that make sense to me. That’s another difficult thing about being autistic. People have tried to explain feminism, explain misogyny (the covert/institutionalised kind), explain the concept of “the patriarchy” to me SOOOO many times over the course of my life, and until now, it never really clicked because they’re related to phenomena that I haven’t personally, consciously, experienced, and the thing about all human beings, but especially autistics, is that we have a hell of a hard time trying to wrap our brains around things that we can’t relate to/don’t have the context to make sense of. This is why it’s important to find those who can explain things to us in terms that we can understand. This is why I’ve chosen to dive so hard into the autistic community. Associating with other autistics helps me to understand & process life better because they speak my language.

Like Hannah Gadsby seems to. I think that’s why I like her work so much. She helps me to understand perspectives that used to just put me off (and to a certain extent still do because I’ve had so many bad experiences with people who are so passionate about the subjects she talks about, probably because they were frustrated by my not understanding them) by putting things into a relatable context for me. We’re all different, so we’re not going to find the same things helpful or relatable, but that’s the brilliance of infinite diversity. There’s something for everyone.

Please try not to get upset if someone doesn’t like/get the things you do. Instead, try to find a way to relate whatever it is that you’re passionate about to something they’re passionate about. This way we don’t have to cancel or invalidate anything nor anyone, but rather find ways to connect the things we thought were unrelated because everything is actually related if you zoom out enough. Please don’t just assume someone is lacking in empathy or humanity because they don’t immediately understand something that shakes you to your core. Perhaps the person just hasn’t had it explained to them in the right terminology or related to context they can understand.

Don’t give up on people just because they disagree with you or don’t see eye to eye with you. They can eventually expand their paradigms, like I’m trying to do. They can eventually find a way to connect to something they couldn’t relate to before. As can you! This is part of the human process of learning & growing, and we do this until the day that we die. We will never know ALL the things because we’re finite & limited. We’re only human, so let’s help each other to human better! I’m here trying to learn, trying to grow, trying to change. Aren’t you?

Please give me, yourself, and others the time & space we need to do this because that’s what it means to be alive. Learning, growing, and changing is what life is all about. We’re all in this together, doing this together, side by side. We’re all living beings trying to figure out how to live better, but we’re not all capable of the same things nor moving at the same pace, and we never, EVER will be, so we really have to let that dream die already. Homogeneity isn’t something to be striven for anyway. It’s quite unhealthy, actually. If we claim to support diversity, then we have to make accommodations for the capacity of those who aren’t like ourselves. Please try to have some additional patience, empathy, & tolerance for those of us who are a little slower at this process than you might be. We’d really appreciate it. ❤