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The following is a dream journal and analysis that I did for a research project. I wanted to share my experience and ask for everyone's opinions on the meaning of the dreams and the way I went about it.

Inquiry 20 Dream Journal
Dream Journal Entries

June 4th, 10:36 PM
Regular sleep (I think):
Some people I know and I were at some big electronics store taking some sort of tour with the owner. He gave me a couple of monitors/televisions for free. I only remembered this dream because I remembered about my new free stuff before realizing it never happened.

June 5th, 2014, 8:13 AM
Nap:
I went to some store like a gas station, hobby shop or CO-OP hardware store (weird places to think of) and I ran into someone from my basketball team. As we walking through we found more and more people, some already together. The coincidence was too much, I thought maybe it was planned (never considered I was dreaming). I found our coach there, too. I think there was someone I knew who wasn’t on the team as well. Also, I think there was a payphone somewhere.

June 7th, 2014, 12:05 PM
Regular sleep (no delayed nap this day):
Someone followed me on Instagram and I went to change my name but never did. I had a different phone (Samsung Galaxy S5?) and didn't notice.

June 9th, 2014, 9:05 AM
Regular sleep:
Running down 8th street east to west, coming from Arlington to Circle. I remember someone telling me to watch out for the speed trap but what I was doing was too important for me to care.

Nap:
I was playing in a basketball game and I was doing well, but my right hip was starting to hurt more and more. I got a pass on a fast break and had and open lane to the basket but at this point I could hardly move. I put up the layup and didn't even check if it went in because I immediately subbed out (even though there was no whistle).

June 10th, 2014, 7:44 AM
Regular sleep:
Dreams were very scattered and disconnected. There was something about some sort of rating system of something (very faint memory). I remember having a cold ice pack on that was warm 10 minutes before and it hadn't been cooled. I told a friend about that. There was a pickup basketball game with people I know. I wasn't playing but I wasn't watching from nearby either. It was like a movie - I wasn't even there. There was a very rich couple who were having a guest from Europe come and so they were planning a mansion party with hundreds of people and they were arguing about it. I also noticed the Facebook Messenger app on my phone was very old and outdated. I don't remember messaging anyone.

June 14th, 2014, 10:12 AM
Nap:
I was going on vacation somewhere really strange. I don’t believe my family was coming along.

June 16th, 2014
Regular sleep:
7:18 PM
Two dreams - one in which I think I was a security guard and another that I can't remember at all.
7:45 AM
Update: upon seeing my mother this morning I know that she was in one of these dreams along with other family members, I just don't know how. I was so close to remembering one of the dreams.

Nap:
8:20 AM
I went to the gym at Walter Murray for basketball practice, but knew that our practice wasn't there that day because both gyms were taken. I was surprised that much of our team was waiting by the gyms. However, the gyms weren't like normal. It was almost like they were on the second story of some castle. The walls were all stone. Anyway, I thought we were in the wrestling room instead for some reason but our coach showed up and it turned out the boys' gym was open.

() = odd observations about dream details
Dream Journal Analysis
Recurring Themes
The most recurring theme I have noticed in my dreams by far is the connection to basketball. Basketball has on my mind a lot lately due to all of the practices tournaments and the NBA playoffs. All of the nights that I dreamt of something basketball related were either the night before or after basketball practice (I only have two practices each week). They tended to be on Monday mornings/Sunday nights.
I also noticed that in many dreams I was surprised to see people I know in unexpected places. I never arrived at the destination with them – I arrived there and then ran into them. I would like to note that although I remembered many specific names, I left them out of this journal.

Connections to Reality:
Entry 1: I have wanted to buy a new monitor or two for quite a while now. I believe the store was a Fry’s Electronics, a large American chain which I visited once over the February break.

Entry 2: I have not had any interactions with a hobby store lately but I did have practice with the people on that team right before sleeping that night.

Entry 3: I have wanted to change my name on Instagram for a while now but have not bothered to do so. I have not had any thoughts about a different phone, though.

Entry 4:
Dream 1: I think this was a result of the speed trap setup in this exact area recently, but I don’t know why I was running that fast.
Dream 2: This one very closely predicted what followed that night. My hip had been hurting for quite a while and it was getting to be quite severe at that point. I knew I had a basketball game the following night. Because I also had football practice right before, by the time the game came around it was bothering me quite a bit while running or moving laterally. I couldn’t really sit out, though, because we were already short on numbers. There was no missed wide open layup, though.

Entry 5: The only connection to reality with this dream is that there was a news story around this time about some ridiculously huge party some kid threw in his parents’ mansion. My dream wasn’t focused on the party, however, but on the drama between the couple.

Entry 6: This dream occurred the night before I went to Regina for a Roughriders game. I went with my brother and mother and met my father there (he was already there for work). I guess that I did go without some of my family but it was still a family trip, and not really a vacation.

Entry 7:
Dream 1: I have been watching a television show that involves security guards a lot lately.
Dream 2: I did have basketball practice later that day, but it was with a completely different team.

Overall:
There was not a single dream without a connection to my real life in this journal. Although I know that dreams tend to be based on real-life aspects it is possible that I only remembered the dreams involving components from reality. Looking over the parts of the dreams I remembered or did not, it tended to be the more obscure elements that were most difficult to remember. I would remember key points but rarely any specific storyline.

The Delayed Nap Effect
In total, I had five dreams in my regular sleeping time and four dreams in the half hour of napping after a half hour awake. That may seem like a lot because of how much more time I spent asleep in regular sleep, but it is important to remember that it takes a long time to reach REM sleep and begin dreaming in regular sleep, whereas a nap within an hour of waking up tends to go straight back into REM sleep, allowing for immediate dreaming.
Three of these four nap dreams were very vivid and detailed when recalling afterward, while only two out of five regular sleep dreams had very much detail. This could be due to all of the naps being short enough that I woke up not long after dreaming. In regular sleep it could have been a while since I had been dreaming. In addition, the lack of deep sleep (N3 stage) in the naps likely made recall easier.

Recall Improvement
I actually began keeping this journal on June 2nd but did not have a dream to enter until the 5th. The dreaming was pretty evenly spaced. I did not have most of the dreams near the end. There was a stretch between the 10th and 14th where I could remember dreaming every night but could not remember the dream itself. This did not happen when I first began keeping track; I simply had no memory of a dream. By the end, however, I remembered dreaming almost every night. With more time my recall of the dream itself might improve as well.

Achieving Lucidity
I did not achieve lucidity in the time that I kept this journal. Two weeks is not much time for this to occur. The main strategies I put in place were the delayed nap, the dream journal, thinking to myself that I am lucid dreaming before the naps and reality checks. Now that I am done with this particular experiment I will probably adjust my strategy in the future. Although it is disappointing that I did not experience a lucid dream, I learned a lot more about dreaming than I expected to. I am going to share my findings on the websites listed in my learning journal. I think that there were a lot of interesting findings that these communities would benefit from reading about. In addition, they can give me tips on how to progress and achieve lucidity.

Finally found time to type this.
Dream recall from naps, or rather a nap. Fragmented and mostly low-medium detail due to dream-time length, it was at least a number of days of time or even a week, i am not sure, my dream recall was not prepared for that.
Also i got lucid at one point for a short period of time, but haven't recalled almost anything about waking life so was just going with dream's storyline. Also this makes my 50th lucid dream on count.

I was living is some other world with family, it was flat, i was in some town and there were farmlands all around. I was busy with something that day until at the night we were surprised to find that there a group of people appeared in the town, who were partly-human and partly-some kind of animal. Everyone quickly became friends with them and the next day(or a few days, not sure) we had fun doing random things including adventuring into some kind of jungle, using some kind of subway system, eating weird food, from which i recall some alive pudding that had to be stomped before eating and there was some background music to that. Also we have found a trio of some cartoonish ghosts who settled in one of the houses in town, they were friendly.
Then during adventuring on the next day we discovered some cave and apparently accidentally freed some sort of 'evil flies', though we did not know about that. Next day we have seen that a swarm of those 'evil flies' were heading for the jungle, there were 'guardian flies' but they missed a few of them, as result 'evil flies' laid eggs in the trees, and there was no way to stop them now.
We were discussing that and the only way was to retreat to the 'bottom world' which was the place where animal people lived actually. Also we figured out that each of us had some form of, i guess, psychic link with one of the animal people, so ones could easily become friends with each other, i think the one i had link with was one boy that had brown fur and was trying to be badass quite often. Before leaving, i noticed that some green rectangular creatures were trying to take over one of the houses. We have used subway system from earlier and one of the trains got us to the bottom world. It was pretty similar to upper world, there was town of some kind, though terrain was more rocky. Interestingly, it was still possible to see bottom of the upper world, but it was bright at day like in upper world. We were staying in some house and were watching some movies and anime together with our new friends before going to sleep.
Then there was the next day, during which we were mostly getting used to this new world, and we walked around some locations in the town. During this i discovered that some of our people were having some hate towards animal people, some were even teaching kids to ignore them completely. I was annoyed by that and there was some discussion going on about that. Later i found out that it was related to one girl, i visited her dad back in upper world and was demanding to know the truth, but was denied. Annoyed, i broke into house and found some weird room. The walls and the floor of it was all bloody and there various sharp instruments and weapons on the walls and the floor. It was old bedroom of that girl, she apparently was murderer in the past somehow and her dad was trying to hide that from her by limiting her contacts, he was also afraid that due to psychic link her memory might come up as well, so he started whole propaganda against animal people.
Then her dad found me here, and was saying that i will not come out of there alive. I was trying to tell that we'll accept her and help her, but he was not trusting me(apparently past murders in that world were easily forgiven or something). He took out the blade from the wall and attacked me, i dodged and quickly got random saw-like thing from the floor, i blocked a few more attacks but saw was not good as weapon in this case, so once i got a chance i changed it for another blade, which was somewhat weirdly shaped. Our fight continued and i almost got defeated, but suddenly that girl was here. She screamed and distracted us from the fight for a bit, giving me chance to try to knock her dad off. But he seen that and managed to block. The fight continued into another room full of some weird stuff, i noticed some 'artifact' items around. I got told(possibly by that boy through psychic link) that the only way to get victorious was to use those artifacts. I can't recall how most of them looked, but i used them on girl's dad between blocking and dodging attacks, each time he got stunned for a bit, but continued assault, then there was the last artifact that looked like miniature observatory. I activated it on the ground and it started getting smaller and smaller while emitting more and more of some kind of power. At this point our fight stopped and we were both confused on what's about to happen. When observatory thing reached smallest size, miniature sphere quickly shot out of telescope and hit girl's dad. There was massive explosion of geometrical shapes, which knocked both of us out.
Later i awoken and found out that that thing apparently somehow changed the mind of her dad, she was there too. And then her dad started telling the truth that he forgotten about with time, and that he remembered it with the help of those artifacts. He was telling something about some kind of ritual and about some group of people who were supposed to fill holes in world with water to keep it stable or something and that they were from that group, then he was telling something about upper and bottom worlds and how they linked, but i can't recall what exactly.
Back at the bottom world i was still thinking about his words, i was looking at some prison building, which was unused due to the lack of anyone to put to prison, and suddenly i spontaneously realized that everything that i lived through so far was just a dream, i was confused and then i really didn't wanted this to suddenly end and wanted to see story to it's end. Nobody was at the streets, so i went home. And apparently there was party and every character i seen so far in the dream was there, everyone was cheering me up and decided to do special night party of transformation practice! Everyone satrted turning into random birds and animals, i for some reason recalled gab's avatar from dreamviews and while thinking 'why not' jumped onto the table and transformed into black cat in upon reaching it, also completely forgetting about dream. Somebody told me that i got eyes wrong, everyone transformed back and we laughed. Then we all were having fun doing various stuff till it was very late. I was going outside and i have seen ghosts that we saw earlier doing something near the 'ceiling' of the bottom world. As i looked more carefully they were trying to get their house back from those green creatures i saw earlier. They were failing for a while, but then something made them recall the target of their existence, they transformed into huge trollfaces and scared the green creatures off. Then ghosts faded out since they had nothing to do in this world anymore. I went back to house, party was finished and everyone went to sleep, so did i.
Next day, i was showing a bunch of video games to our animal people friends and then we were playing them together. Later, a new person showed up in our house, she was an ordinary girl but from what psychic linked friend was telling me, she was one of the people who were linked to the day of the year, or something. We found out that 'people of the day' started appearing in both worlds for some reason. We accepted her into our group.
Later this day i was in some school in bottom world with a few animal people and we were trying to figure out more about those 'people of the day'. We figured out that they have link to some other people as well, but not psychic, but living link, and that link appears upon contact and it's not predetermined. Some of 'people of the day' start disappearing for unknown reasons, and people linked to them died. We tried to keep bunch of 'people of the day' in safety by guarding them in one of the rooms, but then some dude with scythe broke through the door and did a swing through a few of 'people of the day', they disappeared. He ran away and we attempted to chase, but he was too fast.
This placed everyone in danger, since everyone have contacted with at least one of those 'people of the day', even accidentally. But we figured out the way to prevent the contact forming, it was basically holding some dirt in the mouth. Then we found out that the 'people of the day' went to hide in this world from that guy, but one girl gave out the location, so he followed. We found her and asked why, and she started telling some story about previous valentine day and something happening in the school. At this point dream abruptly ended sadly.

I had some problems with recall during this week, mainly caused by sleep schedule changes (most days I had to get up earlier, and the alarm screwed up my recall).

9/12, 14, 15, 17 and 19

Nothing.

9/13

Metalinga! fanzine

I made a Heavy Metal fanzine with some friends, the Metalinga! Fanzine. It had some Metal albums reviews and a lot of crap. Despite being a fanzine, the design was very professional, with full color pages and amazing graphic work.

9/16

Big IAC

I go to IAC (Instituto Argentino de Computación), an institute where I go to PC repair and LAN management classes. But this time the classroom was three or four times larger., and looked like an old train station. I am with a lot of classmates (in the real class we are like 10 students only) and the two teachers, Mariano and Matias (the last year teacher). Mariano is gossiping with my classmates about Paparazzi, an argentinian tabloid (WTF?), and Matias is finishing a program to the next assignment. I go with to help him (He's a bit confused because Mariano started to make the files but He can't find them). He tells me: "This will be your next homework, but I can't find It". I saw an icon called "pipa" (Mariano always calls his programs with names like that), so I told hin I found the batch file (we always work with .bat files).

9/18

Fake SD

I am playing a First Person Shooter with my brother and a misterious guy. Somehow, I manage to survive pretty well, and I give a tough fight to them, but then, things start to get harder. I must start to run away more and more times. The "map" was pretty big, like a megamansion, and I ran away across the entire playable area several times. But later, I am going through undeground stairs, and i appear in my grandma's house (It is right next to my house). All looks very realistic, I know I am dreaming. Suddenly, a woman appears next to me. She is quite good looking, with blonde hair, beautiful eyes and a gorgeus body. She gives me a bunch of pirate DVDs and says "take your Black Metal DVDs". She disappears.

I woke up (really), and decided to continue the story, I DEILD'd back to the dream.

Now I am back in my grandma's house. I watch the DVDs for a while (They were amazing Black Metal live shows), but then, I woke up (FA). My grandma comes very scared. "Matias, go to see what's happening to your brother". I know what happened, but I don't understand why. It's related to the shooter game, but I don't know how a SD could be scary for my brother. He is in his bed, covered with blankets, sweating alot, like posessed by a demon (the "demon" of shared dreaming?). "Well, this is quite confusing, I'll wake up". And i woke up.