Last weekend, I wandered into the Hunterian Museum in London.
My husband wanted to go for his birthday. He’s always had a slightly questionable fascination with horror films and thought spending an afternoon looking at preserved body parts sounded fun. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. I just went because it was his day.
What I didn’t expect was to leave thinking about a torpedo ray.
The little information card explained that it could generate enough electricity to stun its prey.
I remember stopping for a second.
Why electricity?
It seemed like such a strange solution. The puffer fish beside it had evolved poison. Others had spikes. Somehow this one had ended up carrying electricity instead.
Even stranger, it somehow manages to do all that without electrocuting itself.
I found myself wondering what tiny accidents of evolution had nudged one species towards venom and another towards voltage.
I stood there smiling - not because I wanted to become a marine biologist, not because this knowledge would ever be useful, not because it would make an interesting fact to tell someone later. I simply enjoyed following the questions.
I’d forgotten how good that felt.
The monkey
The feeling surprised me because I recognised it immediately. It reminded me of seven-year-old Ashley.
My parents bought me every animal book they could find. We’d spend hours at the zoo, and apparently there was one visit where I stood watching a monkey for nearly an hour. Not running around. Not getting bored. Just watching.
How it climbed. How it held things. How it slept. How it hugged the others.
One monkey occupied my entire afternoon. Not because I thought it would make me clever - simply because another living thing felt endlessly interesting.
Somewhere between then and now…
I think I quietly stopped looking at the world like that.
Useful
Nothing dramatic happened.
Life simply became full: a career I genuinely love, a marriage I’m deeply grateful for, training seriously for boxing, keeping a home, friends, family, responsibilities.
I don’t think adulthood stole that part of me. It simply became increasingly good at rewarding something else.
Usefulness.
Study hard. Build a CV. Get the job. Be productive. Optimise your time. Read another book. Learn another skill. Without noticing, I think I slowly started asking every new interest the same question.
What will this do for me?
A language became a CV. A book became a number on Goodreads. A hobby became proof that I was an interesting person.
I still loved learning.
I just wasn’t very good anymore at letting something be interesting without asking it to justify itself first.
An empty afternoon
I realised this on a recent trip to Bordeaux with my mum. She had gone for an afternoon nap. And for the first time in months, I had absolutely nothing I needed to do. No meetings. No meetings. No training. No emails. No responsibilities.
I remember feeling strangely restless. I picked up my phone. Put it down. Opened my to-do list. Closed it again.
It wasn’t boredom - it was as though my mind couldn’t quite accept that an hour didn’t have to belong to somebody.
Every minute of my normal life already had an owner. Ten minutes on the Tube meant meditation. Another ten meant replying to messages. Walking somewhere meant listening to a podcast. Waiting meant clearing admin.
I’d become incredibly efficient at filling every gap.
When there was finally nothing to optimise…
…my attention didn’t know where to go.
(I eventually spent the hour editing social media for my boxing club. Some habits die harder than others.)
Boxing
Looking back, I realised the same thing had happened to boxing.
When I first walked into a boxing gym, everything fascinated me. Distance. Timing. Footwork. Why one punch landed and another didn’t. Every session felt like discovering another tiny piece of a language I didn’t yet speak.
Then competition arrived, and without noticing, curiosity slowly became performance.
I stopped asking,
“I wonder what happens if…“
and started asking,
“Was that good enough?”
The strange thing is…
I box better when I become curious again. Mistakes stop feeling like evidence that I’m failing. They become puzzles.
Instead of thinking,
“I’m getting this wrong,“
I find myself thinking,
“Interesting… why did that happen?”
The same thing that woke me up had quietly become another place where I was trying to prove myself. Until curiosity found its way back in again.
Looking again
When I think about some years ago, before boxing came into my life, I don’t remember being unhappy. Professionally, things were going well. Objectively, life looked successful.
But I remember feeling… unmoved.
Wake up. Work. Tick things off. Go to bed. Repeat.
Looking back now, I don’t think I was missing another hobby, or another achievement.
I was missing something that pulled my attention outside myself. Something that made me forget what time it was. Something that made me care for no reason other than I genuinely couldn’t help it.
I don’t think I noticed what I’d lost until I accidentally found it again.
Maybe that’s the strange thing about these parts of ourselves.
They don’t disappear all at once. They simply become a little quieter every year. Not because the world becomes less interesting.
But because we become so busy managing our small corner of it that we gradually stop looking beyond it.
The Workshop
I’ve realised that’s really why I started building this website.
For a long time I thought it was about writing. Or sharing ideas. Or maybe helping other people. I’m sure there are still small pieces of ego tangled up in it too - I’d love people to read it.
But somewhere along the way, that quietly stopped being the point.
Every morning before work, while the rest of the house is still asleep, I sit down with a question I don’t yet know how to answer.
Sometimes it sends me down rabbit holes I never expected. Sometimes it changes my mind. Sometimes it simply reminds me to pay closer attention.
As I’ve been writing these essays, I’ve realised they aren’t really about boxing, strategy or museums. They’re records of moments that asked me to look a little more closely.
At fear.
At uncertainty.
At another animal quietly carrying electricity.
At my own life.
Maybe that’s all this website really is. A practice of paying attention.
Because I don’t want to become so good at managing my small corner of the world that I stop noticing how astonishing the rest of it still is.
I don’t know whether this website will ever have two readers or two thousand. But I hope, years from now, it still reminds me to keep asking questions that don’t need to lead anywhere - to keep following the ones that quietly refuse to leave me alone.
And above all…
To never become the kind of adult who stops noticing things.
···
Still asking.