Awake to take in the view...

...and the coolest story idea ever! I only remembered one dream from last night, and sadly it wasn't lucid, but it was still really awesome.

My family and I were going to the Haunted Islands (which is a placeholder name for a foreboding archipelago in my imaginational world that will be used in one of my novels at some point).

But they were significantly different than how I designed them in my conscious, waking life. For one thing, they were more of a theme park or tourist attraction. In fact, as we were going to visit, we weren't sure if the place was really dangerous or if it was just a fun attraction. We went in the evening, when the sun had already set, so it was already pretty creepy.

There were two large mountains that embodied the spirits of the island. The narrative temporarily faded, and instead I was looking at a coloring book with the mountains outlined on it. I started coloring them in with a gray marker. Then, they became real again. One had the head of a snake, with glowing eyes which switched from yellow to blue every few minutes or so. The other was another monster, more mammalian: I can't remember precisely what it was, but I think it was either a bear or a wolf or something. The snake-mountain was really cool. It was almost seductive in the way that it spoke, inviting us to the island. However, it also creeped me out, even though I absolutely love snakes in the waking world. I think I just got a really bad feeling, and so did my parents. Like we shouldn't be there.

The snake gave us one last warning: We had a short increment of time in which we could still leave. The gates to the haunted world were closing, but we had like a minute to rush out.

My sister was really excited by the prospect of exploring this haunted world. My brother usually goes along with her IRL, and he did so in the dream. However, my parents decided to leave. At the very last second, I decided to as well. A silver analog clock read 10:25 PM, and I had a lot of homework to do even in the dream. We rushed out the gates and just got out before they shut. Barely. Narrowest escape in a dream ever. xD

And then I remember vaguely something about Scooby-Doo.

This is oddly symbolic of what's going on in the waking world. Suffice it to say that my sister was doing some rather unhealthy things...think drugs and sex as a high schooler. And my brother isn't doing anything crazy., but he is losing his faith and is really struggling emotionally.

I'm using this dream as a creative idea. Either for a novel or a theme park ride idea, or -- better yet -- both! I'd like to be an Imagineer one day, but I don't think this idea would work particularly well for Disney.

Oh, and I also had two more dreams, but I couldn't remember them. I know I had them, but I had zero recollection of the content upon waking.

A few days back, there were two nights in a row where I was having dreams like Inception or something. Essentially, I knew that I was dreaming, but then I would have false awakenings inside of the dream. So I would think that I was awake, but I was actually still sleeping.

In one particularly memorable dream, I was part of a laboratory experiment on sleeping. The idea was a bit absurd, now that I have my waking brain to analyze it: If I drank water during a dream, when I was thirsty, would I still be thirsty upon waking? I fell asleep inside of the dream, and took a nice long draught of water. I woke up inside the laboratory dream and found that no, I wasn't thirsty anymore! The scientists were all excited, and so was I. Then I woke up for real, and realized how cool that was. Unfortunately, I was still thirsty, so I took a drink of water for real.

Experiment result: If you are thirsty during a dream, you should just fall asleep inside of the dream, and drink water within that dream. xD Or just wake up and drink water for real.

In another dream, I think I knew I was dreaming and so I flew, but I wasn't conscious enough to think of anything more than that. -_-

Last night is a bit more hazy, and I have an insane amount of homework to do today so this will be a quick summary:

- A little girl who was left behind on a haunted island (with spirits and such) finally got found, rescued, and reunited with her loved ones. I think that I helped her somehow, but I honestly don't remember. I had a degree of lucidity in that one.
- Another dream happened where I became lucid while driving a car through some mountains. Decent amount of city around me. I was singing and thought it would be a brilliant idea to practice my singing voice in my dream, where nobody could hear me. However my logic wasn't working too well and for some reason I thought I was actually singing out loud and was going to wake up my roommates. This caused me to wake up and realize I wasn't. -_-
- I was in some sort of theater, and asked everyone in the room something like, "Hey! Who here knows they're dreaming right now?" My brother was there, too. I was hoping that someone else would remember, or maybe there'd be a shared dream or something, but I honestly can't remember what anyone said...
- I was watching some sort of advertisement, and there was this girl in a swimsuit who was sort of attractive except she had one of those gross spray-on tans.
- I have a vague memory of some sort of romantic/sexual dream, but I sadly can't remember it. Maybe I'll have a continuation of that theme tonight? :O We will see. That would be awesome!

You know why this night was so successful, though? Affirmations plus sufficient sleep! The night before, I told myself I WILL lucid dream tonight, and I guess that determination worked its way into my subconscious. Plus Daylight Savings Time helped a TON. Woo!