Bubble

So last night, I had a lot of trouble with inductions... again... I'm just out of practice. Frustrating, but I'll get back in the swing of things. I tried to go directly to Rome, but I'm just not familiar enough with the location, so I'll try my house next time.

During my second attempt, I ended up with an Out of Body Experience instead of a lucid dream... yes, I know they're technically the same thing, but the OBEs always unsettle me. And I'm always blind during them, since they tend to send me straight into the Void, which I hate. So I got irritated when it happened and just reclined back into my body and went to regular sleep.

I dreamed that my boyfriend and I lived in a different part of town than we do right now... in the dream, we lived really close to my brother. We were moving. My mom, my brother, and one of my boyfriend's friends was helping us. This particular friend is extremely chill, never gets upset over anything, is even more patient than my boyfriend is (patience of a saint), etc. I was in the car with him, and my boyfriend was in my car with my mom and brother.

We were moving to a different section of the city... maybe even a different city further south... in any case, I lost the address of the house we were moving to, which was sort of like a ranch style duplex thing, and I don't have the directions either. The siding of the house was white. Houses in my dreams always tend to be white, for some reason.

Anyway, so we get onto the wrong on-ramp, and we pass my boyfriend and my car and aren't able to turn around to join/follow them, so we're on the freeway straight to a different city (and no off-ramps along the way). His friend is getting progressively more irritated and pissed off. I've never seen this guy get pissed over anything, ever, and he kind of reminds me of one of my cousins as well, so I think this is hilarious and start laughing. Which makes him angrier, which makes me laugh harder.

I was such a dick in that dream.

1. I dream I am working at a nursing home. I take care of an old lady, and take her to a doctor appointment, but forget to actually take her in to see the doctor. I send her off (to somewhere) and then remember that the doctor hasn't actually seen her, and start worrying that even though she is healthy she may have health problems that aren't so obvious... but there's no way to fix it without getting in a lot of trouble.

2. One of my less comfortable OBEs. I partially woke up, but my body was still 'paralyzed' and I was half asleep. I tried to settle down and catch onto a dreamlet or something. That isn't working and I'm not entirely lucid, so I try to sit up out of my body. My body "sticks" to me like it's glue, so I try to roll over out of it. I feel like I am tipping and sinking backwards into the bed. I am in the "wind tunnel". I start to panic, and after a lot of flailing around and struggling, I lapse back into unawareness.

3. I dream that there is a huge snowstorm and the whole city has shut down. The city I live in is one I've never seen before in my life. I go outside and start trying to shovel snow with everybody else.

4. I dream I am in a castle. I am moving through room after room. The floor has diamond floor tiles in various brown colors. I can get on top of the walls and run along them, and jump down into other rooms. As I am crossing a hallway, I see a mirror. Mirrors always make me lucid - I approach it, see my reflection, and 'push' into lucidity. Unfortunately, I'm sleeping too lightly, and it wakes me up (not a false awakening).

I grumble and roll over. A few minutes pass. Someone lightly knocks on my door, twice. I ignore it because if my brother is trying to wake me up on the morning I have a day off work, he's being a jerk.

Someone knocks on my door again, a little louder, twice.
I say "what?" but there's no answer. I get up and open my door, but nobody is there. I hear someone in the kitchen. I go into the kitchen and ask my roommate, "Did you knock on my door?"
She says, "No, I wouldn't do that."
My brother is asleep... my other roommate isn't home. My roommate verified that she was, in fact, making breakfast, and that I did ask her if she knocked on my door. Even though it was a hypnopompic hallucination, it still sounded very real, and was pretty creepy.

Review:
Last night was semi-productive, I guess. I'm having more lucids, but the quality has gone down. I don't think it's because I'm getting "worse" at lucid dreaming, so much as I am having a lot more lucid dreams lately and the quality will slowly improve again.

When I say OBE, I don't really mean that I believe it's an actual out of body experience. I mean that it's a specific kind of lucid dream I have where it feels like I am rising/rolling/whatever out of my body, and either end up in the void or end up in a facsimile of my bedroom, while my "body" remains in bed. I don't believe anything paranormal is going on, it's just a really specific kind of dream with a really specific feeling... and a specific set of challenges that I still haven't overcome.

Clues I was dreaming:
- I don't work in a nursing home
- We don't have blizzards where I live
- I don't generally wander around castles

I don't remember much of last night. Again, I was distracted and not focused on dreaming lucidly, although I did ponder it as I fell asleep.

I had one of my out of body experience type things. Sometimes, while asleep, even though I am not dreaming I will instinctively "sit up" out of my body and begin an OBE.

I was not able to easily fully free myself from my body, this time - for whatever reason. But I WAS able to see - in the past, I've always been blind - although I wasn't able to fully open my eyes. I was quite aware that this was a form of dream, although I was unable to control its course. I stumbled around my dream-room, half-blind and unable to control my limbs very well at all or free myself from my blanket, which I felt like I was entangled in.

I realized that this wasn't working well and lay back down, attempting to visualize and possibly break out of the OBE into a regular lucid dream. I also attempted to do a scene change to sky, which didn't work. Unfortunately, I lost lucidity.

I know that this wasn't a misadventure with sleep paralysis because I've gotten very good at differentiating. When I woke up, my bed and bedroom were unmussed despite the fact that in my OBE/dream, I had completely wrecked my bedroom and knocked/thrown stuff everywhere. Unless I then cleaned them up in my sleep... lol.

I was woken up by my smoke alarm chirping. I had to get up and change the battery. While I did so, I tried to ponder the dreams I had, but I couldn't recall any of them. It was frustrating. My dream recall seriously hinges on how stressed and distracted I am.