What do you want?
For some people, that question is surprisingly hard to answer.
You may still be working, helping, achieving, caregiving, meeting deadlines, and keeping life moving. You know how to be responsible. You know how to push through. You know how to do what needs to be done.
But somewhere along the way, wanting went quiet.
I Used to Want Things is for people who have spent so long living by obligation that they no longer know what belongs to them. Burnout, depression, trauma, heartbreak, caregiving, people-pleasing, and years of putting everyone else first can slowly teach a person not to ask for too much — until even simple preferences begin to disappear.
Eva Clark explores why desire can go underground when wanting has repeatedly led to disappointment, rejection, guilt, exhaustion, or conflict. She shows how discipline can keep a life functioning while leaving the person inside it disconnected from pleasure, preference, ambition, intimacy, and choice.
Through intimate stories, practical reflection, and small experiments in wanting again, this book helps readers notice tiny preferences, separate borrowed dreams from genuine desires, rebuild boundaries, rediscover pleasure, and learn the difference between a want that needs to be followed and one that simply needs to be heard.
This is not a book about becoming selfish, reckless, or endlessly motivated.
It is about becoming a choosing person again.
You do not need to know your whole future.
Start with the next honest want.
