In this autobiographical narrative study I consider how curriculum, in particular the mathematical curriculum, emerged for me throughout my life. My aims with this study are: - to show how my concept of curriculum has emerged and changed over time. - to encourage others to envisage curriculum in a range of different, but complementary ways. I started with a naive view of curriculum - the received curriculum. While teaching this changed. I began to appreciate levels of curriculum (national, school and classroom), to realize that within the constraints of a national curriculum I had professional freedom and to understand how students negotiate curriculum. I also became aware of curriculum as a continually changing process rather than a product. As an education officer in the curriculum development division, my views evolved further. I juggled with the conflict between all planning for the classroom and curriculum as government policy. My understanding grew about the assessed curriculum, the global curriculum, the development process (based on a research-development-dissemination model) and the notion that a curriculum should operationalize educational aims. I realized that contradictory perspectives on curriculum needed to co-exist. In the last 15 years I worked in tertiary institutions. My scholarship focussed on curriculum-related matters. My view of curriculum became multi-dimensional and complex, with associated documents and development being inseparable from curriculum; and I formulated a model in which curriculum, development and other influencing activities are envisaged as a complex living system.