#306: I'm a curly wurly

I’ve always tried to be a straight line.

But really, I’m a curly wurly

Sometimes I feel that I’m so curly that I’m not even a wurly. I’m a squishy squidgy pigdy thing that isn’t even a shape. It’s just a thing. A blob. Not even a blob. A shape you can’t define or explain.

However, I’m fantastic at turning myself into a straight line.

In fact I’m fantastic at becoming any shape anyone or any thing needs me to be.

I’ll straighten myself up and bend myself around to squeeze into whatever box I need to.

I was brilliant at this at school. That was so easy. Laughable how easy it was. Just remember a few answers to questions and write them all down again to get top marks.

Sometimes I actually liked the shapes I was bending myself into. They fit nice and snug. The shapes in Maths I enjoyed, and in English and French.

Other times I snapped myself about just to fit in.

Like when we were all going out at 19 and every lad in Stoke wore polo shirts with logos on. I bought them too. I hate polo shirts, but everyone else wore them so I did it to fit in.

Many times I tried so hard to uncurly my wurly but I couldn’t. My wurlyness just popped out. Like when I went to Uni, but dropped out after 2 years to start a rubbish tech startup. There were only 9 hours of lectures a week, what else was I supposed to do? All you had to do was read books and write about them.

Other times I straightened myself out so much each day until I forgot I was curly after all. That hurt. Pretending to be a tech startup CEO did that to me.

Recently. I’ve been trying to find a shape to fit into. I’ve been looking for a hole to walk into where I fit all perfect and snug. I’ve been trying to put myself into a box. I can’t find the right one.

There’s no curly wurly shaped hole for me :(

Founders are often kind of curly but so many of them have the straight edges and serious faces about BUSINESS and MONEY and serious important stuff that I find BORING.

There are lots of curls and squiggles in the founder box that I like, but it still doesn’t always feel like the right shape for me.

Writers are weirdos too. But so many of them are reclusive and live in solitude and are strange observers of the world, living in cracks in the pavement. I’m not that curly am I? That shape doesn’t feel quite right either.

I’m a Dad and a Husband and a Son and a Friend. I’m all those shapes too. Sometimes when I’m packing the car to go out with Sarah and Xander and I’m making sure it’s all organised in the right way I think; “yeah this is what a Dad should do, I’m doing it right!”

Then other times when I couldn’t care less about the price of petrol or the MPG and that drill I bought is gathering dust in the pantry and the shed at the bottom of the garden should have been painted years ago, I think; “that particular shape of Dad isn’t right for me”

The man box is rubbish. I like football but the other lads don’t even let me in the football box because I don’t get aboslutely battered when watching England and I don’t talk waffle or hot air about Football. I try and talk about the economics behind Football and how it’s interesting that it’s the most popular sport in the world but it’s revenue falls way behind the less popular American Football (which is why American businessmen are buying Premier League clubs). Nobody else finds that bit as interesting as whether Kane is better than Rooney (he isn’t, but if we win the World Cup he will be).

All these boxes aren’t quite right for me. I don’t fit in any of them!!

And I can’t bend any more. I won’t bend any more. You know what, I don’t even want to be in a box at all.

I just want to be really curly. Really frizzy. I just want to be whatever mad shape I am. I don’t want to change it to fit into boxes.

Why am I trying to squidge my curly wurlyness into the shape of a pentagram or a 15 sided circular triangle? Why would I want to be a square????!!!!!!

I must stop doing this. Now.

I must begin being a proper serious curly wurly.

That must begin today.

Each day I’ll ask myself.

What would a curly wurly do?

Wait, what would a curly wurly actually do?!

James x