When I sit with people one-on-one and ask a very simple question—
“What do you really want?”
most of them don’t know.
Not in a dramatic way. Not like they’re lost or broken. More like… the question doesn’t land anywhere. They answer with concepts. Freedom. Peace. Purpose. Less stress. Or they laugh and say, “I have no idea,” and move on quickly, as if that’s just a personality trait.
What’s interesting is not that they don’t know.
It’s how much energy they spend managing the consequences of that not-knowing.
Overthinking. Scrolling. Planning. Healing. Preparing. Improving. Coping.
Entire lives built around staying functional while nothing actually moves.
For a long time, I thought this was about discipline or bad habits. I don’t anymore. I think most people aren’t addicted to behaviors. They’re committed to not finding out what they want.
Before that makes sense, there’s a distinction that matters.
Wanting is craving. It’s mental. It circles. It imagines. It feeds the self-image and needs constant stimulation because it never satisfies. It’s empty dopamine. How hungry is a ghost? Infinitely.
Desire is different. Desire moves. It creates contact. It costs something. Even when I’m sitting still, desire has weight—it’s embodied, real. Dreaming about going to sports camp because my body wants to be there is desire. Fantasizing endlessly while doing nothing is wanting.
One moves you.
The other keeps you busy.
This book changed me in the process of the writing like nothing else before - it’s wild because I fundamentally changed my relationship to desire.
You will discover:
- Why being inside the right game (procedural desire) is more than self-actualization or self mastery.
- Why aliveness is the only real currency—everything else is a substitute economy.
- And Why intelligent minds won’t shut up—and what happens when you stop treating desire like a problem.
This isn’t a motivational book.
It won’t tell you what to do.
It won’t help you decide safely.
It’s a book about exposure—about the moment you realize that nothing is actually blocking you except the way you’ve learned to protect yourself.
I didn’t write this because I had it figured out.
I wrote it because I couldn’t unsee what was happening in my own life—and in the lives of people I worked with who looked “fine” on the outside but weren’t moving where it mattered.
If you’ve ever felt:
– busy but strangely stagnant
– self-aware but indecisive
– capable but under-lived
this book will feel uncomfortably familiar.
Wanting Illusion will be out on 3.3.2026 and the pre-order is open.
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