Awake to take in the view...

Hypnagogia: I was prompting AI to do something. Don't remember what.

Dreams:

• I had Disney Vacation Club Points -- a total of 10736. I do not do any of that timeshare stuff IRL so I have no idea if that number even makes sense.
• Lady had cargo (???) can't read it
• We found bulls. We were in a crowd, and I was worried about them charging. Suddenly, we were in our house that I grew up in and my parents still live in. I hopped on a fence to stay safe from the bulls, which also had teleported there. My mom said something...illegible. The cart (?) has term lodging (?) 44 (?)
• False awakening in which I checked the time on my bed as 4:35 AM
• Dream of Lagoon amusement park and (illegible) days

No lucidity, but hopefully I will keep up my journaling and other practices up even after the competition.

...And the secret was getting 7.75 hours of sleep, apparently. I'm going to try and continue this trend. Regardless of how intense the week is, I will do my best to get enough sleep on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. Which, for me, will be hugely beneficial I think.

So here's a list of all the many dreams I have recalled from last night:

Dream 1: Non-lucid; experienced during first 20 minutes of sleep. I fell asleep at roughly 12:10 AM, and had a dream about hanging out with my sister, my brother or friend (I think?), and a friend of my sister's. My sister went to use the bathroom, and the other guy I was with was talking with me and her friend. We were talking about her, but I don't precisely remember what we were talking about specifically. When she finished using the bathroom, she came out and said "You know I heard you while I was in there", because IRL my sister really does have good hearing. So maybe it was something embarrassing, but I don't really know for sure. I woke up and it was only 12:32 AM, so my brain had apparently launched me pretty quickly into REM again for some reason.

Dream 2: Non-lucid, but very close to lucidity. Good vs. evil! A giant snake was trying to kill me and two other people. However, my stuffed snake, Snakey, my tulpa, and I were destined to save us all! (I actually do have a stuffed snake, and he is actually named Snakey. He is the coolest. However, he is at my parent's house right now. :p In the dream, he had become real.) We prayed that we would be able to triumph over the snake. Then, we felt like we should just will it away, because -- get this -- we recognized that it was only in our heads and wasn't actually real. This one was SO CLOSE to being lucid, because of that realization, but not quite! We willed it away, and it worked!

Dream 3: Non-lucid. This is a fuzzier dream that I experienced during what felt like deeper sleep. Arguably it would've been significantly harder to become lucid during this one because of this fact. This one occurred in the middle of the night, if I recall correctly. IRL, I work part-time as a computer science TA at my university, helping students debug Java and Android programs. In this dream, the other TAs and I apparently "did not want to stop believing OR coding". I believe some malevolent individual was trying to get us to stop believing in God or something and also stop programming. Someone said that he would kill us all if we didn't do this. He had an army of supporters to back him up. Then, it faded and we were in a theme park. I dream a LOT about theme parks. Anyway, we were on the rides, but I was watching from a distance despite being on a ride technically myself. (?) Some of my fellow TAs were riding on a white roller coaster. The evil guy's plan was to hack into all the rides while we we're still on them, and somehow harm us. Maybe shut them down. I don't really know. I was worried for the others. Then, it faded again, and we were on a revolving turntable, much like the turntable by the roundhouse in Thomas the Train, but indoor and stark and depressing. I got onto it, and the evil guys had surrounded us. However, I somehow knew that we were going to be safe, and we were saved. I don't remember how.

Dream 4: Non-lucid. I was in a lecture hall of some sort for artists. The lady teaching was trying to tell us that 3D artists should NOT learn to draw or digitally paint, because apparently it would actually make us worse, since it would take time away from learning how to model and render a scene. I was really ticked because I definitely disagree with that philosophy, and I believe that the general 3D community would agree with me.

Dream 5: The DILD! Sort of. I didn't have a specific reality check that worked this time. But when I sleep 8 hours or close to it, my body starts waking up more and more as my actual wakeup time approaches. I will often physically wake up to use the bathroom or get a drink of water, and then go back to sleep for a while longer. This is the most natural thing for me. As I do this, I have more and more dreams, and more and more REM sleep. Then, I am much more likely to recall dreams, and also much more likely to become lucid. Hard work pays off, guys!

First, I was on the internet. Some girl said that she had recently had a week-long paid internship with Disney, where they were basically paid to ride rides all day long. They were supposed to observe the culture of theme parks, or something. Then, I suddenly found myself on a cart or truck thing going to a theme park. It was presumably Disney, but there were a lot of rides that Disney definitely doesn't have IRL. All these other people were on the truck, too, but they were official interns and wore brown vests. I was there, but I didn't have a vest, so apparently I wasn't an official intern. I was worried I'd get in trouble for being on the truck despite not being officially hired, and wasn't sure how I even got there in the first place. My mom and my brother were there, too. And neither of them had vests. I went to go sit by my mom, but as I sat down beside her, she disappeared. I felt that she was still there, but had no idea why she had just randomly become invisible. Also, the seats were tiny, so my butt barely fit on them. We were in the back of the truck, in the open air with just a pavilion thing over us. So if it would have been raining, we would've been sheltered, but we still got fresh air.

We kept riding in the truck, looking at the rides that we would soon ride. I then realized that I was dreaming, because Disneyland does not look like that IRL. Too many thrill rides. Well, that and my mom randomly disappearing.

So I sat by my brother, and told him, "I think we're in a dream right now." And he said something like "We definitely could be. Is everything out of focus?" I said that yes, everything most certainly was out of focus. So he said that it probably was a dream. Suddenly, instead of being inside of a truck, it was just me and him and the (inferred) driver inside of an SUV or a Jeep Cherokee or something, and there were suddenly windows. So I clambered out the window, which was partially rolled down, and flew towards one of the rides!

It was a water ride with boats that looked like Perilous Plunge, an old ride from Knott's Berry Farm that I never actually went on. It went inside of a brown artificial mountain, and it was super cool. But just as I was about to reach a boat to get on it, I woke up. D: NOOOOOO!

The dream was still fuzzy, too. I wish it was more vivid, but mentally I was so close to awakening that I did accidentally wake myself up. -_-

Also, my notes read "still had sizzle". Nope, no idea what I meant by that. o.o

Dream 6: I tried to re-enter the previous dream, but to no avail. I do have a note that said "she knew I wanted it lol." Don't recall what that means, but I can guarantee you that it was not appropriate.

Dream 7: I had a dream. There may have been a girl but I can't really read my notes. This was more like a fragment. My alarm woke me up before I could get any further.

And that's it.

Nights 5 and 6 earned me zero points. No dream recall; no anything.

On one of these days (can't remember which), I experienced a very short WILD during a nap. It lasted about 3 minutes. During the dream, I tried to achieve my second competition goal of figure drawing (practicing a real life skill). While I was able to make a sketchbook appear, it was harder to make a model show up, and I tried to start sketching but I think I woke myself up. At any rate. I'm not going to count it this time, because I know that I can do better than that. I don't think it quite counts since I didn't really finish practicing the skill, like I didn't even finish a gesture drawing or anything.

Night 7:
Non-Lucid Dream Fragment 1: This was from my hypnagogic imagery. It's always hard for me to wake up during those and write them down, because my body is in the process of falling asleep and doesn't want to stop! However, in this one, I was walking to a castle, with Tess.

Non-Lucid Dream Fragment 2: I was visiting an aquarium at a college. I believe it was either a) one I had previously visited IRL, or b) one that I thought I had visited IRL in the dream, but hadn't actually done so. There was a whale, and I can't read the rest of my notes. -_-

Non-Lucid Fragment 3: I was at a different version of my grandma's house, and a former uncle of mine was there. He either farted or fainted -- it's hard to read my handwriting dang it xD I think it was actually farted. And he was putting away some stuff in storage. The dream faded to a store/shop of some sort.

Night 8:
Non-Lucid Dream Fragment 4: There was a Pokemon, a spider and something else that I wanted but that also creeped me out. Someone or something got lured into a corner.

Non-Lucid Dream Fragment 5: Theme park, roller coaster, talking with others at the stheme park.

Non-Lucid Dream Fragment 6: I was making love to an older (middle-aged?) woman. She was very pretty, and it was all in all a very pleasant experience, but I remember wishing that she could somehow be Tess, my tulpa, so I wouldn't feel so guilty about what I was doing.

Non-Lucid Dream Fragment 7: This one may gross you out. Just a fair warning haha. I fell in love with a lizard that was sticky and slimy. I need to stop spending so much time on DeviantART. It is dirtying up my subconscious mind. xD

Non-Lucid Dream Fragment 8: A group of shiny people were running away from something. Metallic shiny, I think? But I was "pinned down and safe." Nope, no idea what that meant. It made sense to me at the time of writing, obviously. Again, too much time on DeviantART. \o/

Night 8:

Non-Lucid Full Dream: I was still a missionary (did it a few years back). It was our day off, and I was on the computer...watching a live dog??? Ah, I still can't read that line! Another missionary was online chatting (face to face!) with Adam Young from Owl City, and I started chatting too! Adam looked a lot younger, though, and he had a security guard with him. For whatever reason, he was in a rush, so he couldn't chat for long. But he was also very kind, as I'd expect him to be.

Night 9: Got nothing. I could've at least written down some hypnagogic stuff, but I was too exhausted. It's been a difficult start to the new semester, and I haven't been sleeping enough.

Total: 1 WILD, 8 non-lucid fragments, 1 full non-lucid.