What's your Albatross?

In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the title character, through circumstances completely of his own making, gets an albatross hung around his neck. A dead albatross, even better.

An albatross is a large sea bird. It looks somewhat like a seagull, but its wingspan is roughly 11 feet, and it weighs around 18 pounds. Historically, an albatross following the ship was considered good luck by mariners, and in the poem, the ancient mariner shoots the one following his ship, thus bringing a curse down upon his entire ship. His crew mates hang the albatross around his neck as punishment for his misdeed.

The albatross has come to be a metaphor for penance or punishment served. I like to take it further, and to have it be penance or punishment brought on by our own actions. We've all got one. Or rather, I know very few people who do not, although I know a LOT of folks who would never admit it in a million years. Something we have done, or gotten ourselves into, that has become a heavy dead weight we can't shake. It might be debt, or a friend's problems, or a relationship, or a job. It could be any one of a hundred things, whether large or small in reality, but for the person carrying it, it's huge.

So, I ask you: what's YOUR albatross? And what are you going to do about it?