I was listening to the Weight of Living Pt. I by Bastille and the lyrics pulled me in so quickly that before I knew what I was doing, I was already staring at ten tabs on my browser, all searching for the albatross.
Here is the gist of it. Samuel Coleridge wrote the Rime of the Ancient Mariner a long time ago and in this narrative poem, the mariner kills an albatross that was flying above his ship. The albatross was supposed to be a good luck sign but when the mariner kills it, good luck turns into bad luck and his crew becomes so enraged that they want the mariner to wear the dead albatross around his neck until they all die because of the curse. And now, due to the poem's popularity and the albatross' wide usage in pop culture, in English, the phrase 'albatross around one's neck' symbolizes a burden or an obstacle.
As I researched and thought about the albatross I realized that the albatross around my neck was my writing. And maybe to some, their writing is not exactly an albatross, maybe it's something that's more like the Midas Touch or the Weeping Angels but in the end, our greatest weapon is also our greatest burden.
My thoughts usually revolve around how subjective the perception of writing is although there are universally accepted factors that make good writing, good writing. How we can think that we are good at writing but then realize that it's such a common task in our lives that anyone who has the inherent talent can build upon it and become better than us. How it has the power to either boost our self-esteems to the skies, or kill us again and again and again mercilessly because we fail repeatedly. How the instances when we see our faults and note our mistakes remind us that we need more time and more practice. How writing can weave excruciating and exhausting with pleasing and enchanting. How it can seep into our bloodstreams and place itself in our DNAs yet still be remote and unreachable to us.
Maybe, my writing is like a magnet: because magnets are never found as only positively charged or negatively charged – they always come with two poles. For me, writing has its positives: the satisfaction, the joy, the power that comes with the ability to put words together in a seamless fashion; and its negatives: the insomnia, the need for new words, and the frustration with muses. And when I think about my writing as a magnet, I understand why I write better when I am negative – it's because I attract the positive side of the magnet. When I am beaming with positive charges, however, the positive side of the magnet is repelled, and that makes perfect sense when you look at it through the lens of, "You write so beautifully. The inside of your mind must be such a terrifying place."
So, I will leave you with this. Writing is hard and I am trying to embrace the albatross around my neck to get into the right mindset, but who knows where that will lead me...
Lots of idioms,
~Belle