side notes

Stress of life

Last night I went to bed very late, around midnight. The recall starts as usual at work, and then it unfolds into more complex known scenarios that are frequently dreamed. It gave me some clues to follow during my WL. I’m planning to do more RC’s while I’m at work in the first place. Then pay more attention when I start worrying about certain things. If I’m intending to have some LD for the competition!

…/As usual I’m immersed into arranging articles. This time, they’re toy trucks for kids under 3. They’re stout and have opaque colors. I’m putting another type of articles to the side of the group, something like video game cartridges or VHS tapes or some odd stuff that pulls my interest, they’re put into plastic bags. I take a look on the group of trucks once more, around 20 set in a square order.
I stand up and start walking down the yard of my childhood school, with big pines on the sides. Not sure about what I’m looking for, but as I keep walking down the place, I get into my university campus. There’s some people walking around in the whole place. It looks like I’m looking for a bathroom. While I keep walking down the pavilions, a lot of students start coming out of the classes. I turn around and start walking back my way. More and more people start walking in my direction, others just standing and talking. It looks like all of the classes ended at the same time. While I’m walking I see a small dog walking with the crowd. It’s a Pomeranian. The dog is looking at me while it quick walks at my left side. That funny walk as they’re smiling at you while they move. I make a gesture like I’m going to put my face closer to it. Somebody starts calling from behind. It’s a female voice calling a woman’s name. I guess it’s her owner. The dog stops for a while and starts walking again as I start moving. She’s calling her dog again. I make the gesture again to make it stop. The dog stops and I keep walking my way back to the upper layer of this place, hoping the girl got impressed with my super powers of being able to make an unknown Pomeranian stop walking.
I get distracted with a crowd of students standing in rows trying to get into some place. They’re matriculating for the next year. I have to do the same but have no idea what to do now. I didn’t get good notes. I start worrying about what’s next. How I was able to matriculate last time in certain courses if I didn’t pass the previous ones. I try to walk through the crowd but it’s impossible in certain ways.
I see a room to the right side. I get in and see a meeting of teachers sitting on a big table. I recognize some of my school teachers. The one from History is sitting looking at the table as he’s worried about something. They’re introducing themselves.
I get out and get into another room at a level some steps lower than the floor. There’s a big bed and somebody known is there. She let a bucket of yellow colored water fall on the side. I complain about it because it may ruin the articles. I’m at work again, I go to see what happened on that corner. I see a known carpet under the bed. There’s not much water there. I leave the place.
Out there I see a friend of mine getting inside a little store, he’s buying something, it’s a music album. It’s roughly packed and doesn’t look original. I get into the store too. On one of the sides, they’re selling music. I say they’re rough copies. Somebody answers yes they’re copies. I go out and tell S. they’re pirate. I ask her if we are still in the city we visited some years ago, she answers yes. Of course! I say, they’re pirates! I see G. proudly showing the CD, DVD? packed in a plastic bag with the printed album cover inside. It’s red and white, I cannot see the logo but I’m guessing it looks like Rigor Mortis first album cover. No way, it’s not original.
We start walking down the side walk, and I see a couple of food stands on the side. I see what they’re cooking on the frying pan, it’s something I didn’t have for a long time, one of my favorite meals! I tell her we should buy some and have it for today. The path turns into the street leading to my WL place. We’re getting into her car/…

I spend a lot of the time at work, interacting with a bunch of random stuff, this reflects in the dreams, they’re basically more of the same, that could be the reason why I’m not paying much attention, except for some events, every now and then

…/I’m in a place like the canteen although both bigger and darker, the dream scenario is blurry. Cannot say if it’s daylight or night due to I cannot see the outside. I notice a lot of people there, I’m walking around the mass. There’s a woman sneaking around us. It looks like a new employee of the HR area. One of my co-workers gets into the place. He’s unusually wearing a big jacket, like he’s coming from the outside. She stops him and arranges his jacket, then she takes a small bag out of one of his pockets. She asks about it. He grabs it and say: “That’s my bag of marihuana” and puts it back into his pocket. I’m like, he’s too confident with it. He goes on where he was going and I get immersed again into my activity of arranging random stuff/…

Last day of the week to work, as usual, the daily morning routine tends to erase all tracks of dreams. This time I’m performing a bit more of effort just after the first alarm goes off, in order to hold the memories of what was dreamed. Seems like SC2023 is giving a hand to push into the journals.
This time I was able to hold the last fragment of the last dream of the night… Day? Morning?

…/I’m doing something with a pile of stout templates, arranging them to fit the corners. I take the one from above, it’s the template for a rough plane. It mixes with the alarm clock, I’m still holding it while I’m trying to stop the alarm/… It’s my phone.

It has been a while since I don’t create new entries in this DJ, although I have some notes on paper and also some voice entries on other devices, I’ll try to put them here too.

First round - Barely recall something about this short dreams, first I’m holding an old big blue book, when I turned it to see the title, it’s a Bible. There was something about my work, I see one of the single adjustable tables on wheels that sometime I use there. Woke up for short

Second round - I woke up again to give the cat his early breakfast, then I was able to remember some details of this dreams, although complete forgot about what was it, perhaps something with my cousin. Then went back to sleep

Third round - I started to think about an upcoming concert of Scorpions wondering if I may go there, then started to think about their live music repertory I start to hear the songs as I wonder if they’re gonna play them, I see the live scene in the middle of the crowd in front of me, every time I change the song, the color set of the crowd changes then I fall asleep… …/We're visiting our neighbors in a city which is not related to them in WL. The house is on the first floor, and looks like the house of some friend of my childhood. Sometimes it’s night and sometimes it’s daylight around. I have an urge to go to the bathroom. There’s something on the WC that doesn’t let me use it. They have some blankets in the bath filled with water. I think it’s a good place to pee, it’s full of water and they’ll have to change the water anyway. One of their older sons gets in and walks through a door next to the WC, he sees me and laughs, I feel embarrassed. The bath turns into a bed and I see a little kitty walking between the blankets. It changes its shape into sort of mouse with fox head. It’s a weird little animal. I touch it with my hand for a while. It runs away. I go back to the garage where I want to put a metal pole standing on the floor. I try to glue it first, then I notice I can use some screws to hold it on its base. I’m wearing a couple of black slippers with cats ears, I find them funny although they’re not mine/…

These times I tend to forget all of the content right after waking up in spite of having the feeling there was a lot of activity. All I can remember from last night rounds is the last fragment just before waking up today:

…/A friend of mine had sent to me a new Facebook account friendship invitation once again, looks like he lost the password for the last one again/…

Had a long semi-lucid and a short low-level lucid today, will post them tomorrow because I don't have time today

Making a note here to remind myself about WBTB timings. This includes time spent sleeping prior to WBTB as well as time awake before returning to bed.

Timing for Pre WBTB
Commonly practiced timings are 4.5hrs and 6hrs. These are probably based on 1.5hr sleep cycles. For example, 4.5hrs is 3 cycles (1.5 x 3) and 6hrs is 4 cycles (1.5 x 4).

Timing for Post WBTB
I've had success with staying awake for just 10m in all my previous attempts. I don't know if I would have higher quality lucid dreams if I were to increase this time. I've had several good lucids, but no excellent ones yet.

Rankings
Here is a ranking of my recent lucid dreams and their WBTB timings:

Night of Friday 3/10/23: My 1st lucid in a long time. Probably my most exciting of the recent bunch. Giving this a 3/5. ?hr/10m.

Night of Friday 3/24/23: Exciting WILD transition, but from what I can remember the dream itself was a nothingburger. 1/5. 5hr/10m.

Night of Friday 3/31/23: Another good lucid. 3/5. 5hr45m/10m.

Night of Saturday 4/8/23: Decent. 2/5. 6hr/10m

Summary
Based on the last four lucid dreams, there might be a bias toward 6hr being better than 5hr. Perhaps they would be better if hitting closer to the 4.5hr mark. Also worth experimenting with the time awake, since I have no data for longer or shorter wakeful periods. 10m seems shorter than what others suggest. Maybe lucidity quality could be improved by increasing it. Overall, more data needed.

Next Steps

Experiment A: For the next four lucids, use 6hr/15m as a timing. This will test whether 6hr is consistently better, as well as whether 15m gives more lucidity compared to 10m.

Experiment B: For the next four after A, use 4.5hr/?m as a timing. Evaluate the ?m timing based on results of experiment A.

Experiment C: For the next four after B, choose the best of both worlds and evaluate.

No recall. Pretty terrible sleep this night, but that was self-inflicted

No recall. Woke up late for work and rushed the memory away.

Fragment
Not much recall today but I did wake up with something. I had a profound feeling of importance about life and family, and the name "Trixie". I wonder if there was a more involved dream behind it, but the feeling and name is all I can remember.

No recall.

No recall this time.

No recall. I was too busy last night and this morning to focus

Lost the recall on these, but I definitely had some content upon waking. Still haven't invested into finding a good solution for being too lazy in the morning to record. They seem to fade so darn fast. To be fair, we had some pretty busy evenings this weekend, so I can hardly blame myself for this result. But still. Wish the recall was better.

No recall.

Definitely had something more than usual today. Maybe multiple fragments or a short dream. But it faded very quickly. Maybe I will look into using a mic to capture these dreams. Maybe I just need to plan waking time in better alignment with my REM cycles.