Hello all. I've been having a problem recently, in that I keep having dreams where I realize I'm dreaming, and tell myself this fact, but I don't actually become lucid.

Example: a few nights ago, I dreamed that I was working in a job I had several years ago. I was behind, and scrambling to get things done, and then suddenly I was getting yelled at by a coworker for the job I had last summer. I kept thinking out loud, "Hey, how did I get here, when I was just there?"

Finally, I convinced myself that that didn't make any sense (which I'm never able to do), and I tell everyone around me, "That means I'm dreaming!"

To prove my point, I took the broom I was holding and snapped it in half over my coworker's head, crouched down, and launched myself through the ceiling. Then I relaxed, fell down through the floor and into an entirely different dreamscape.

The problem was that I wasn't really lucid the whole time. The dream wasn't any more realistic, I only had a small amount of control, etc. This kind of thing has happened to me a lot lately, and it's pretty frustrating.

Suggestions? The only thing I can think of is that I need to slow down and concentrate on what it means that I'm dreaming, but the one time I did that, I just felt like I was trapped in a reality that I couldn't do anything about, which was a pretty weird sensation, but it didn't help me attain a higher level of lucidity.