When What Used to Matter Stops Mattering

When I read a recent interview with Josh Homme, of Queens of the Stone Age, something struck me. He was talking about leaving behind what no longer serves — not in a dramatic way, not as a story of reinvention, but as a matter-of-fact reality of lived life. Things he used to care about, patterns he used to repeat, no longer held weight. And yet the next step wasn’t visible, wasn’t certain.

There’s a strange place like that — where the old life feels hollow, familiar habits feel flat, and the things that used to matter simply don’t. You can’t go back. You can’t chase. You can only move forward in the quiet of your own presence.

It isn’t dramatic. It isn’t heroic. It’s just real. It’s the work of noticing: this is what’s over, this is what I’ve carried long enough, and here is the space where the next thing will meet me — when it’s ready.

Sometimes, the feeling is boredom. Sometimes, it’s restlessness. Sometimes, it’s that flat ache you can’t explain. That’s exactly the point. That flatness is the signal. That pause, that space, is where clarity forms.

The next step, the encounter, the life that actually feels alive — it’s already coming. But it waits for presence. It waits for integrity. It waits for quiet acknowledgment that what’s ending is ended.

And this isn’t a theory. It’s something you feel in your body. The nervous system knows the truth long before the mind does.

So stay here. Notice. Let the old drift away. Be present for what’s arriving, even if you can’t see it yet.

You can read the interview with Josh Homme on GQ Mexico here.

[image: Alex Katz - Claire, Grass and Water]

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