Lucid at last

[Phant0m]

I hope I'm not breaking etiquette by diving straight in, but I was so happy to have achieved lucidity that I wanted to share the experience and how I got there. I've been vaguely interested in lucid dreaming for many years. Way back in the 1990s I considered purchasing a NovaDreamer but I never got that far. In recent weeks my interest began to grow again and I started reading around the subject. I'll cut to the chase. I've been off work for a while, and I have been having very frequent dreams that I am back at work (something that is not currently possible). Every dream is different, and each time the actual setting looks nothing like where I actually work, though in the dream it all seems normal to me. A few days later I'll have another work dream, in another completely different setting. It mirrors a common theme that happens in my dreams, where I dream of people that I know. The images in the dream bear no relation whatsoever to the actual people, yet somehow I know exactly who they were supposed to be when I wake up. I am blessed with excellent dream recall, and often wake having remembered several dreams from the previous night. While searching for reliable dream signs it occurred to me that for some reason I never seem look at my feet in my dreams. It's an odd thing to notice, but they tend to play out as you would view them through a video camera. The camera never pans down. I started taking time to glance at my feet from time to time during my normal day. Two nights ago I had the work dream again, and this time it was unusually realistic and bore a substantial resemblance to where I actually work. The people were real people that I know. I didn't understand how I could be at work in my current situation so I questioned whether it was another dream. Look at your feet, I told myself. I looked down. My feet were in a pair of very odd-looking yellow shoes, almost like a cartoon, and flapping up and down like a duck's feet. I knew immediately that I was dreaming. I took control of the dream and managed just a few seconds of exhilarating lucidity before I woke up. I don't know whether I got over-excited by finding myself lucid and ruined it. If it happens again (let's hope so) then I will try harder to stay calm and take it steady. After waking I fell asleep again and had another long, vivid dream, during which I had no lucidity. The theme was unrelated to my lucid dream, and it was no different to my usual dreams.