Any field of science is about paying attention, whether you’re putting something under a microscope, cataloguing animal behavior, or figuring out what genes or cells do. When you pay more attention, you get to be surprised by things that you had become numb to, like saying goodbye, listening to music, sleeping in, or feeling like an adult. During the past month, I’ve been writing a pop-up science column on these seemingly idiosyncratic topics. Thinking about these subjects has helped the routine seem novel again. And by delving into research that pays attention to familiar experiences, I’ve realized that much of the world around me is not as fixed as I might have thought.