The Multiplier Series: Collapse, Awareness, & Infinite Becoming

Part I: The Collapse

When Awareness Begins with Discomfort

The last two weeks have been a period of deep introspection. Not by intention, but by inevitability. I didn’t plan to examine myself this closely—yet somehow, I found myself standing face to face with patterns I could no longer ignore.

It began, unexpectedly, with social media.

I have always had a complicated relationship with it. From the very beginning—back in the MySpace era—I experienced anxiety around social platforms. While I understand the original intention behind social media—community, expression, connection, shared experience—I have always felt its darker undercurrent more acutely than most.

The comparison.
The fear of missing out.
The emotional overstimulation.
The neurological overload.
The vulnerability.
The anxiety.
The quiet sense of overwhelm that creeps in before you even realize it’s there.

Often, I feel it the moment I open an app. My body anticipates the flood before it arrives. And while there is good content—real wisdom, inspiration, and beauty—there is also something undeniably consuming about it when engagement becomes unconscious.

I’ve come to understand that social media triggers the same chemical responses in my body that addictive substances do.

One day, I let myself fall all the way in.

For nearly 24 hours, I was fully immersed. Scrolling. Reading. Laughing. Crying. Commenting. Sharing. Time dissolved. Hunger disappeared. Sleep felt irrelevant. Hours passed like minutes, and I was stunned by how easily my awareness collapsed into the experience.

It was intense. Almost surreal.

And yet—because of the way my algorithm is shaped—it wasn’t empty content that met me there. It was spiritual reflection. Self-development. Awareness loops that felt less like distraction and more like confrontation.

What emerged was humbling.

I realized something both simple and unsettling: nothing stands still. Not time. Not the world. Not our minds. Everything is always moving—expanding, decaying, evolving, becoming.

And I saw, with uncomfortable clarity, where I had not been moving at all.

Lack of discipline.
Inconsistency.
Disorganization.
Stalled growth.

These patterns weren’t isolated—they echoed across multiple areas of my life. I had slowly collapsed inward, folding in on myself over time. The image that came to me was striking: I was my own dying star—burning inward instead of expanding outward.

That realization hurt.

We often hear that we create our own futures, that our lives are shaped by our choices. But truly understanding that my current circumstances—whether intentional or not—were a result of my own inaction landed heavily. My lack of movement had consequences.

And sitting with that truth was uncomfortable.

But this was not failure.
This was awareness arriving.

And awareness, I am learning, does not come gently. It comes honestly.

This was the beginning of the collapse—not an ending, but a necessary contraction before expansion. A moment where illusion fell away, and I was left with myself, unfiltered.

In the next part of this series, I’ll explore what that mirror reflected back to me—and how responsibility, when embraced without shame, becomes the doorway to transformation.

Because stagnation isn’t the opposite of growth.

It’s the signal that growth is waiting to begin.