side notes

My goal deadline is today. My goal was to log 30 dreams and 5 lucid dreams. I gave myself one month to do this. During this month I was able to exceed my recall goal, I logged 40 dreams. However, I did not meet my goal for Lucidity; I was only able to get lucid 3 times. However, the last lucid was easily my best ever, so I'll take the quality improvement over the quantity. I am revisiting my goals and will update them in the next day or so.

Meeting with family

I went out of my aunts home. I could easily spot each member of my family. They were talking and laughing. Younger members were playing volleyball. I tried to find a good spot, and I saw a bench. In some places it was hidden behind some pillars. I sat behind one of those pillars, and felt better. I heard my family talking about going to church somewhere in a city.

*Mother told me that while I was sleeping, my aunt with her daughter drove to the hospital with a woman. Their car broke near my house, so father helped them repair the car. After repairing they were sitting in our kitchen, and talking about mass for my dead uncle. I must've heard them from my room, and it incubated the dream.*

Donating my blood

I was in my kitchen. There was a weird device for donating blood. You had to take needle and stab yourself in the tongue. Machine then would suck your blood from artery placed there. My mother told me to use it, and that it's for helping the hospital.

The school play

With my younger sister we were chosen to participate in a school play. It was recreation of story from Hobbit book. I went to the room where other actors were preparing. It was a room full of weapon replicas and training dummies. We had to train for the battle scenes. I was searching for a long sword, but couldn't find any.

At the disco

I was at the disco with my pals. There was a disco ball, and rhythmical music. I somehow liked it, and started to dance.

*I don't like discos and dancing, it was a good opportunity to DILD, but I missed it.*

Zombie apocalypse

*This dream is ridiculous, and full of wrong assumptions.

I was in the ruins of gigantic metropoly. With a group of survivors, we were hiding in a self made shelter underground, near the surface level. It all started when nuclear weaponry was used during the cold war. Radiation caused weird mutation in people. Soldiers were killing everyone, zombies, and civilians to stop the plague from spreading. I was searching for resources, and I stumbled upon a squad of soldiers. They were wearing green suits, and trench coats. I escaped from their ferocious onslaught, right in the moment when they were attacked by zombies. I couldn't come back for weapons, as the area was contaminated. I returned to the shelter, only to find one priest inside. He told me that everyone escaped, and while trying they were eaten by zombies. I told him that we're low on food, and that soon we'll have to find some. We only had some bread, sausages, sweets and two oranges.

I seem to, ever so slowly be getting back on my game. My recall was sour last night, but in terms of lucidity, I was right on the money.

I started to become lucid when I looked at myself in the mirror. I seemed to have the saggy, wrinkled body of an old person. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I looked away and looked back. I looked mostly normal but had little star stickers all over my body.

I questioned if I might be dreaming and did a nose pinch RC. Yeah, I could breathe, but not very well. I decided to look around for other clues to the state of reality that I was in. I walked around the house, everything was normal, not a hair out of place. My mom was the only other one home, and she asked me if I had recently seen her car keys.

I was still tackling the puzzle of my reality. I went outside and saw a green 50's pickup truck and a very odd orange sports car in our drive. This didn't seem too weird or dreamlike. There weren't any huge planets or multiple suns, though leaves on the tree in the front yard should have been a dead giveaway. I repeated the nose pinch RC. Still confusing results. I thought that maybe I wasn't pinching hard enough. I pinched as tight as I could, and I could still breathe a little.

I made my way back inside, and looked down at myself. I was still shirtless and covered in star stickers. My mom was still looking around for her keys. There was a green truck in our drive. I finally came to and became lucid. I manifested a white tank and thought to remove all the stickers and started to head outside. My mom asked where I was going. I told her that I was dreaming, and that I had to go. She followed out the door and yelled to me that the last time that I said I was dreaming, I had left her alone. She said that she needed her car keys and a hair tie, and she seemed sort of irritated.

"Okay, Look! This is my dream. You don't seem to get that." I put my hand behind my back then held it out with a black hair tie in it. "Here's your hair tie." I put my hand behind my back and thought of car keys. I held out a key in my hand. "Here are your keys." I then put my hand behind my back a third time. "And here's a book, I heard it's a good long read that will keep you busy for awhile." I handed her a thick beige paperback novel with a blue rectangle on the cover. She seemed really happy to receive these items.

Yeesh. Dream characters can be so annoying.

I got down to business. I thought that I should perhaps find Manei and talk to her. I got some good lucidity going. Then I got the dream ending feeling. I knelt down in the grass and tried to hang on to the dream, but it didn't do me much good. I woke up.

The thing that I have come to notice more and more about my lucidity is that it is not particularly dependent on how many reality checks or mantras I've been doing lately. Heck, it doesn't even appear to be very dependent on things such as bedtime or the day's activities. (That's not to say that these things don't impact it.) This could explain why on nights that I charge in, Mantras-A-Blazin, I get nowhere. And on other nights where I don't even give a crap, I can wind up with a rather long and effective lucid.

Instead, it seems to rely to a degree on simply being in the correct mindset for lucid dreaming. I can't really put my finger on what it is, because I only have a rough idea what I am trying to explain. But I do know that it is something akin to mindfulness. In essence, I need to be mindful of my true reality, that I am laying in bed and that what is occurring is a product of thoughts.

I've also found out how goals can be a little finicky, especially when you're not working with perfect lucidity. I've got quite a list of goals, and I've been completing them all out of order. It's best to just pick one (or at the very most, two) goals to focus on per night. I've also found that visualizing completing the goal is rather pointless because it is guaranteed that they way you complete the goal in the dream is going to be vastly different from what you imagined.

The mental state that I am trying to achieve, in general can be a little bit tricky. Staying away from tv/movies/computer games seems to help with my mindfulness. Drawing or writing seems a good way to organize thoughts. Meditation seems a step in the right direction, but overdoing it can throw me off. Same goes for Mantras.

The hardest part about this is falling asleep. I can charge in hardcore and try mantra myself to sleep, but that seems fruitless. I can just throw in the towel and just allow myself to think about random stuff, and that's about as useful as it sounds. I guess I have to go back to my old tactic of the 'cut off' technique.

I am also experimenting with polished stones and crystals that have been sitting in my drawer for years. Some people might see that as a wonderful idea, and others may see it as quack new-age spirituality. I made a small crystal grid back before Christmas, and constructed it around the idea of lucid dreaming. I'd also like to try placing crystals under the pillow or bed-frame. The only way I can really know if this is crap or not is to try it out myself.

In other news, my friend S made me a new avatar picture. I will be using his. I like it.

So last night went to bed about 1am after i saw a episode of Power ...took my 3mg of melatonin and my b6 and set my alarm for 3am ( usually i wake up natural anytime around 2-5) decided to try something new , thought about some dreams i had the night before said some things to myself i want to remember and then i fell asleep to wake up at 5:45am , slept right trough the alarm somehow ...that never happened before , still had 1 dream could not remember at all. Since i was up did the WBTB no Wild this time but next time should be better , just ended falling asleep 1 more dream that i cant remember .

Did a natural WBTB at about 5:40, I stayed up for only 10 minutes this time but it was pretty light outside so I had some trouble going back to sleep again. I originally had some notes on my dream app that I was going to reference but that was erased unfortunatly so I'll have to type this from memory which will make the fragments even shorter.

Non-Lucid
Questioning
Lucid

Fragment 1
I was in a beautiful steampunk inspired city that was floating on an island in the clouds. I was with another boy and we were traversing the city trying to help someone while trying to avoid the police. We were being questioned by an officer and decided to take him to the museum so he would get bored and leave us alone.

Fragment 2
I was with a group of survivors in an abandoned house surrounded by lava which had covered the entire Earth. I was sent on a scavenging mission and remember running away from something before the dream faded.

Frgment 3
I was in a doctors/scientists office and he had a huge magnifying glass pointed at me. I got up from my chair and looked at a hologram of the Earth which appeared to be made out of lego, I glanced behind me and the magnifying glass was lego. I took a couple pieces from the glass and the doctor/scientist told me to put them back.

Not very long but that's to be expected when I'm doing it from memory a couple of hours later. Gonna keep doing WBTB and try going to bed earlier so I can wake up naturally when it's still dark.
- Have another Lucid Dream
- Bend all 4 elements
- Tell a DC I'm dreaming and see their reaction
- Fly
- Find my Dream Guide or have them find me

Halfway through (4 hours into) a really early to-bed night (7:30pm!)

+ talking to a girl/bunch of girls on Ol near FL, one is named "Yuna". One is alone at first and I try to get her to follow me, but she's hesitant. She waits for the group to join her and then I approach and ask them their names, and start to get closer to them and the dream fades.

+ walking through the village with naked / bathing girls, threatening atmosphere, stuck in entrance area; super windy weather, strange pyramid sailboat; Breaking bad's Walt is in chains and body-invades another prisoner and watches the face change

+ super high security home, toothpick security cameras bristle from the ceilings and are even on the mirrors in the bathroom, the security guards scan for unfamiliar faces

I'm standing at a bathroom sink it's fairly dark, inspecting the mirror, the mirror has strange features and I'm trying to figure them out: it's a multi-section mirror and I do not recall seeing any reflection. There are tiny bead-sized "mirrors" I think, capturing the image and reflecting it in zig-zag diagonal order back and forth up the face of the mirror and finally into a small video camera at the upper-right corner of the mirror, this goes to the security system.

In a open dining room/kitchen area with a large island, some women are there, I notice poking down out of the ceiling everywhere a forrest of little spines, toothpick-thin with tiny video camera beads on the end of them. They send images of faces to the security guards for constant review. I wonder if they'll come for me since even though I'm here with people who are obviously not scared of me, I'm not registered in the system, the woman says she will call and notify them that I'm OK.

+ in upper level of two-level gym, checking out hot girls below, I say "If you stand in front of the guys with muscles, it seems like the girls down below are looking up and smiling at you"; fight at the gym between two black guys with briefcases, one messed up "all the orders" of the other one

I'm doing bicep curls in a gym with a barbell. It's an upstairs area with a big glass wall (dream sign) overlooking a large lower gym area. My area is multi-level like large steps with a bunch of people around me and above/behind me also working out. I'm appreciating 3 super hot girls (exaggerated body part sizes?) in the front/right area of the gym floor below. I come out of this room to a side area and I'm exclaiming with happiness/smiling that I've figured something out: "If you stand in front of the guys with muscles, when the hot girls smile at them you think they're smiling at you!", I have a thought that this is sort of pathetic.

+ with college friends, DD is young and pregnant and showing nice cleavage, she greets me warmly then I notice her fairly exposed bust and exclaim, "Hell Yeah!"

+ at the busy train tracks intersection, cut leg on ragged edge of screen mat, guy wants to share mat, weird lizard twiggy chest muscle-man in the garden, another guy shows me the way out, the path is ankle deep in sliced tomatoes.

A group of us are approaching the major intersection, it is a crossing where a train/vehicle tube approaches from the left and continues on the right, but at the crossing the tube is cut away so the cross street can go across. I run up to the intersection with a folded up section of screen-door screening and I cut the left side of my lower left leg on the exposed jagged edge, I look down and I see a 1.5 inch cut in the pre-bleeding stage, just a few spots of red. Waiting for the cross traffic (fast cars/vehicles) to clear away they're moving from left to right, I think this is a dangerous intersection, don't want to get too close to the traffic. After the vehicles pass I see a group of people running after the cars. We "go" and turn right and start running with the flow. We're carrying these mats (mine made of screen material) so that we can "run on them" and it will allow us to go faster. A guy approaches from my right and asks me if I can use my "???" (screen), I say no I have none to spare. We're running to the left side I'm trying to choose the right path. My wife is behind me and tosses an empty sack to the guy and says here to use it as his "running mat".

I enter a little garden area with a muscle-y guy who takes off his shirt, I expect to see standard muscles but his chest is bizarre: instead of regular pectorals, his upper chest is covered with raised, lizard like "chicklet" small square bumps about 1/4 to 1/2 an inch on the side, slightly orange-ish colored. His main "pecs" are made up of a tangle of short twigs raised up over his skin, it's really weird. Another guy offers me a way out of this garden, a short curving-to-the-left little path to the right up out of the area, I walk in it and it is ankle-deep in sliced tomatoes.

edit: 2-3 hour "WBTB" then back to sleep (2am), up 10am

tons of dreams, lots of wakings, lots of "The Phase" attempts, probably only half of dream scenes remembered, very vivd/"present" but no lucidity

Probably at least 6 or more The Phase separation attempts during late morning on and off dozing (usually my best time for lucids), mostly the rotating visualization, once I got a bit of a strange feeling and a bright flash of HI but it subsided quickly. Each time returned to a dream, non-lucidly.

+ checking wife into hospital ("short term/long term?/allergy?"), expensive ($3600 total, $2511 after insurance). The clerk is a young Asian man seated on the other side of a counter. I'm here to check in my wife. He asks "long term or short term?" I know it's not long term but I want the possibility of overnight if needed, so he says "allergy (check)". Several more questions/answers, and he pronounces the bill is around $3600 total and $2511 out of pocked for me. I think that insurance (Obamacare?) is barely helping at all and we may forego treatment entirely with that bill.

+ fixing something in a tangle of 2 women, "give me the screwdriver"; medical exam of young woman who's bleeding slightly from every toenail (& tooth?), touch her (ahem).

There is a woman doctor checking out the young woman who says "it hurts," and the young woman's mother, I'm lying with the young woman on a bed under the sheets while she's being examined. At one point the doctor/mother leave and I ask the YW where it hurts, and she takes my hand and places it firmly on her genital area. It feels unrealistic, like a thin layer of skin over a hard artificial surface underneath.

Spoiler for explicit:

I run my fingers up and down and work them inside the top layer, and feel the warmth and moisture

. The doctor/mother come back and I quickly move to pull up the panties of the YW, and make a gesture like i'm pulling mine up as well, and I think this arm-gesture is well-understood and they'll know that I'm pulling up my underwear under the sheets. They inspect the girl some more and this is where I see the spots of dried blood on top of every toenail, and I feel relief that attention is diverted away from what we were just doing.

+ find my kids socks lying in the gutter in the parking lot of a stripmall, enter sports store to buy underwear, $68 / pair, jersey/jockey confusion

Driving in a car turning from an intersecting cross street to the right on to a long large street of endless strip malls like El Camino Blvd. in silicon valley. I stop and get out and cross the sidewalk into the parking lot. I look down and see a few pairs of socks in the gutter/edge/curbe of the parking lot, I look at these for a while and am trying to figure out if these were my kids' socks that I'd been looking for for a while. One pair is medium-dark army green.

I enter the sports store and I want to buy a pair of underwear. There are bins and shelves all around. Sales guy comes up and I tell him I want to buy a pair of jockey briefs, "short" and he leads me to a display. The material is dark (black) with lots of dark but colorful vertical stripes (green, gold, etc.). I can't tell the shape of the thing. The guy indicates it's $68/pair, I'm astonished at the price. I say I wanted jockeys, not a jersey, maybe he's showing me a sports shirt for the gym.

+ drive down hill steering locks up park without collision, talk to guys who's plants I slightly ran over, where's the hospital/DMV, buildings in distance, narrow vegetable store shortcut, buy something to be polite, $36 eggplant, wallet

I'm driving down a hill daytime in our old white minivan. The steering wheel stops responding, it's locked up like when parking, I think this is because I've committed some driving infraction and the police have locked my steering wheel. I'm amazed I haven't crashed yet. There is a tiny bit of play in the wheel and I keep driving maneuvering around a bit, but don't have enough control. I pull over to the left curb and apply the brakes card and come to a stop just barely before hitting a parked (motorcycle?) where a guy is about to get on and start. I get out and he comes to me saying how I almost hit him and I'm repeatedly telling him that my steering wheel locked up and I had no choice/ no control. I'm standing on the sidewalk looking at my van, the rear left wheel is up on the curb and near some plants with colorful (purple?) knarled roots. The owner of this plant (another guy) is standing besides me and talking about how I slightly ran over his "?????" plant, and I say believe me, the last place I want to be is on your "????" plant.

I ask the way to the DMV/hospital(?), I say (sort of [false memory] remember) "is it there beyond the freeway" which I see in the distance. No, they say it's that building there, I see two building much closer, large, cube-shaped, multistory & tall (10-12), light tan/peach colored, with castle-like ornamentation on the upper floors.

I'm walking towards them to pay my fine and unlock the steering wheel of my mini-van.
Enter a small market, I need to get to the other side, a friendly vegetable stand vendor (Asian woman) beckons me to walk through her stall, it's long and very narrow. I see vegetables on shelves all around me, there's a long basket of (olives?) in my way, she raises it up so I can get by and I'm concerned that they will fall out. The way is long and narrow, I'm thinking as I approach the end and the sidewalk on the other side that I should buy something in appreciation. I turn around and stand at the counter, I'm asking about bunches of purple peppers, I ask "are these hot peppers?" (I like hot peppers). They turn into small eggplants as I'm watching. She gives me a price (tag?) of $36. I'm astounded, $36 for 2 small eggplants?! No way. I say maybe $9 or $10 if in a really fancy store, but I think more like $5 is appropriate.

This is definitely one of my longer dreams. I tried to WBTB but I was feeling slightly ill when I woke up so I didn't bother. I'm beginning to see a pattern in many of my dreams being at school or about school with my friends or about my family. Those may be some of my dream signs that I should try to pick up on. I'm also noticing that I'm starting to question the events in my dreams more, only I get an instant reply from my brain telling me that I'm not dreaming which kinda sucks. I guess it's only a matter of time until I ignore the reply and become lucid, hopefully sooner rather than later. Until then I'll keep on dreaming

Non-Lucid
Questioning
Lucid

I was in class and sitting next to my friend J. The seats were organised in a horse-shoe shape with one table in the middle. We were working on a math book, answering the questions on the first two pages. She was doing all of the work and I couldn't read anything in the book (thought I had dyslexia.) The teacher was trying to hype everyone up about the work even though it was really boring. He told us that we were in history which struck me as odd since we were doing math work but I just thought that we might be catching up. Out of nowhere two DC's carrying an injured student burst through the door and stopped right in front of me. J got up and started tending to the patient, I noticed my other friends M and S sitting on the table in the middle of the room. "Why don't you be her assistant nurse?" M asked me, "I don't have any medical skill" I told him. I decided to leave the classroom and walk around the school, I think the teacher got annoyed with me for trying to leave but I just ignored him. Once outside I noticed two kittens in on of the gardens. One of them was sleeping and the other was lying on a rock, I picked up the sleeping one and started to pet it (really cool because I actually felt the fur) which was acually quite damp so I assumed they'd lost thier mother. I found another one of my friends, L, and we took both of the kittens to find their mother. One of the teachers saw us and ordered us to put the kittens back because the mother would come back for them. I wasn't convinced and started looking for the mother on the bridge which is one of the entries to the school. I looked over the bridge into the creek and saw a red-furred creature dive between the rocks. I looked harder at the rocks which eventually melted into oil. I then loooked under my feet whewre the bridge was tranperent and saw a dead body along with some other oil covered birds. I looked back over the creek once again and the creature surfaced from the oil. I thought it was the mother of the kittens but the teacher told me it was a dog and the very cat-like looking face morphed into a dog's. (It became pretty vauge at this point but I kind of remember entering the sewage system which quickly turned a dream that I've had a couple of times.) I was with a group of people in a cave, It seemed like we were all knights and exploring the cave system to kill a witch that was hiding there. We were all wearing different coloured armour and I only knew the name of Thor (wearing black armour.) We eventually encountered the witch and promptly hacked her to pieces. Her remains combined to form a black deck of cards which would then turn into something much worse. I chopped it into two pieces, took Thor, and ran back the way I came. I vaguely heard the shouts of our comrades being dispatched as we arrived at the enterance which was now a manhole with a ladder leading to the surface. Thor climbed with ease and I began to have a lot of trouble reaching the ladder because a rubber platform was blocking my way. I heard footsteps and looked into the dark hallway to see glowing red slits between armour. I started to freak out and Thor held his hand down for me to grab before we closed the manhole. I looked around and it seemed we were on a huge castle with an army of the very thing that we were running from. They raised their bows and began firing upon us. We took cover behind the walls and stayed there for an amount of time before Thor suggested we surrneder. I wholeheartedly agree with him and we emerge from cover wiht our hands up. A group of stone men scale the walls to meet us, one looked at me and say "Your surrender is welcome, to me my servants!" The stone men merge to form a stone version witch that we had killed earlier. Once again, everything went super vivid and I saw the witch's face in such detail before I woke up.

That's a pretty long one in my opinion. It seemed like a bit of a chore to type down but I got it done and I'm excited to dream again tonight. I'll definitely try WBTB again now that I'm feeling much better. I think I'll change up my list a little bit to motivate that little bit more to become lucid again.
- Have another Lucid Dream
- Bend all 4 elements
- Tell a DC I'm dreaming and see their reaction
- Fly
- Find my Dream Guide or have them find me

Night creatures

*A nightmare in dark, overnight scenery. I recall that it's not the first nightmare placed there. I become lucid near the end.*

I am walking on foot in the pine forest at night. I was afraid of being surrounded by paranormal. I could sense the presence of something unspeakably evil. I thought I saw something behind the trees, but it was some kind of shrine made of white marble. I sensed something behind me, so I tried to run away. I found myself in the churchyard, but everything except cemetery was closed. I ran through the graveyard, on the road avoiding dead ends, and somehow entering the church. I walked upstairs, and saw someone praying to the elder werewolf god. I was surrounded by possessed dogs. I thought to myself Godmode! I grabbed two of them and threw them away. I grabbed the other two, but they bitten me really hard. I could feel the pain, but I wasn't even hurt. Eventually I threw them away, and woke up having enough of it.

Stopping the thieves

I was in a big seaside city with my classmates. We saw someone breaking into the jeweler's shop. We entered the car. I was the driver, and we drove through the wall, stopping them, but destroying the building. Police came quickly, they were mad at us for all the destruction, but since we helped them, they didn't punished us. We were invited to a party made by the jeweler, but I said I have to go, I have something to do. While going away, I heard my classmates saying Something about that one... I didn't wanted to hear it, and entered another shop. After a while went out, and met someone from school. We went on the
shore, and talked about our lives.

Dying for love

It was in post apocalyptic world. Germans won the World War Two, by using nuclear weaponry. It happened during the evening and night. I was trying to save a girl attempting to suicide, I felt that I love her. She wanted to enter the hazardous environment, where one of nuclear rockets striked. I persuaded her to stop. She wanted to jump onto the train, but I stopped her in the last moment. Then she accused me of stalking her. I entered the truck, trying to escape from a group of german officers. They shot me in the heart. I died in that cold, dark foggy night.

Fallout

The cold war ended with nuclear war. Humanity lived in the cavernous bunkers made by germans during the world war. Everyone was scavenging for food and other resources. One of my friends told me to go for resources into the western chamber 1/a. I told my group to look elsewhere, and I'll go there alone. I entered it, but suddenly the automatic doors closed, and toxic gas was going out of a pipe. I tried to open the doors, only finding another set of doors behind them. I finally got to the last one, but they were too hard to open. Then a dog put his paw through the door, stopping them from closing, and saving me. I came back to my group, with a new friend.

Temporary opinion:

Even though I have sporadic results, skewed interests, and spotty motivations in my dreams, I feel it’s a source to keep trying to find ways to connect those experiences together. Or in other words, even if some moments may not hold much value in the life I’m living right now, I feel the more I recall them, and start seeing patterns, and hear certain things that validate why these things are happening in my dreams, it sort of gradually removes my doubting on dreams holding any learning potential.

I had a few dreams today that were blatantly obvious in how I could associate it with the present. Before, I would be left questioning why things are occurring, and it’ll probably be an up and down kind of adventure with meaning and no meaning, but that’s what makes it fun; whatever dream character I interact with, non-lucidly or lucidly, is a chance for me to test my means of apperception, i.e., taking new ideas/knowledge/experiences, and assimilating it to whatever is already in my mental repository.

It seems like the conquest to know more about myself, and how I assess myself in my life will never stop. It seems to be my source of inspiration, reflecting on things, finding ways to rise to the challenge; finding ways where I can’t control something and overcome adversities, but knowing that it’s okay; it’ll all be alright in the end, because the more I keep my center in any circumstance, dream or this reality, I can persevere and find new outlooks on things. Whether it’s finding meaning in life (e.g. existentially, psychologically), how to interact with others, how to appreciate and care about other people’s lives, it’s always there for me to tap into.

And even if those moments in my dreams are transient, and imaginary, there’s a sense of liberation when realizing that even if there’s potential irrelevance and meaningless in my dreams, and even in life, it’s alright; just keep going.

Though my workbook says I'm practicing the DILD method of lucidity, after further research I decided to try MILD. I'm starting tonight. My goal is to remember as many fragments of tonight's dream as I can, in the morning.

Tonight I'm in a hotel and had gone to bed at 12:30am, early for me, after a big meal with lots of wine. I slept for a few hours and it was probably around 3–4am (an estimation, I didn't check) that I started water-cycling. I've found it the best way to avoid a hangover: I wake up at intervals to drink as much water as I can comfortably consume, which inevitably means also having to use the bathroom frequently once the rehydration sets in.

I had already woken a few times in the night and this waking seemed no different at first, because dream logic prevented me from realizing how odd it was that I was walking down a long hall to use the bathroom rather than just using the one in the room. Yet from the start, something made me wonder if I was dreaming. I tried jumping and levitating but it was inconclusive. It didn't occur to me to try other checks. I went in the bathroom and noticed it looked just like one I had just been dreaming about before I woke up, which also seemed suspicious, but I still felt very embodied and awake. I even noticed how clean and inviting this bathroom felt, in contrast to the unpleasant aspect they often present in dreams. I felt awake enough and had to pee urgently enough that I was tempted to just go ahead and use the facilities, reasoning that if I was actually dreaming then with careful intention I should be able limit this activity to the dream state and not accidentally release my bladder in waking life. But uncertainty made me hesitate—I couldn't afford to be wrong about this! Something still made me sense that I was dreaming, even if I couldn't seem to prove it.

I noticed a woman sitting nearby, which did not strike me as odd, but opportune. I approached her and asked, "Am I dreaming?"

"Yes." I was struck by the simple decisiveness of her answer. It was also uncharacteristically straightforward, given the usual evasiveness of my DCs.

"Thanks for being honest. Usually when I ask people in dreams—" (I used this phrase instead of "DC" because I was afraid she might it insulting to be reduced to an acronym) "—they say 'no'. Why do they do that?"

She shrugged slightly. "They're probably just nervous."

I wondered what they might have to be nervous about, but wanted to understand what made her different. "Then why were you so honest?"

"I represent your higher functions." I'm pretty sure this is what she said, or very nearly. It struck me as an oddly technical response.

This DC really intrigued me. She seemed so smart and self-aware, in contrast to the typical dullness and blandness of those I try to interact with. I looked at her closely. She was a slim young woman who appeared to be in her twenties, pretty, with glossy shoulder-length black hair and an Asian cast to her features. Her demeanor was calm, precise, and assured. I wanted a name to remember her by, so I asked: "What's your name?"

She promptly uttered a string of numbers, something like "2166309."

Perplexed by this response, I pressed, "I mean in letters." If she couldn't answer, I decided that I would name her "Murasaki." I had just been reading about the names of Japanese colors so the word was fresh on my mind; I knew it meant purple, and the woman was wearing a bright purple shirt and looked like she might be Japanese. I also recalled that "Murasaki" was a name of ancient pedigree, being the heroine of The Tale of Genji as well as the pseudonym of its courtly author. But my deliberations were unnecessary, it turned out.

"Meonarra," she said. At least that's what it sounded like.

I pressed for clarification: "Can you spell that?"

She might have started with an "M," but what followed was not a series of normal alphabetical letters. She specified particular accent marks and chemical symbols that I wasn't even familiar with. Her explanation of the spelling sounded far longer than the actual name, and at least half of it seemed to be special characters. Even listening closely, I couldn't follow it at all. I wished I had a way to record it other than my own weak memory. I reflected how people in many pre-modern cultures had developed their memories to an extraordinary degree, but we, who can almost always rely on other means of recording information, have very little ability in that regard. I wished I had a notepad to write down what she was saying, but there would be no point: I couldn't keep it with me when I woke up. So instead I just asked her to repeat herself: "Can you say that again?"

She obliged, but it sounded completely different this time, and I could swear the new spelling ended with a "D." That wasn't anything like the name I thought I'd heard. I figured if I couldn't spell it, I should at least make sure I had the pronunciation right. "Meonarra?" I asked, pronouncing the first syllables as "mee-oh." She corrected me; the first vowel was more like the "a" in "after," so it sounded like "mae-oh."

I realized that I was falling into a rut by obsessing over the name, and the dream was not going to last much longer. "Can I see you again?" I asked Meonarra. "I'd like to have a conversation sometime."

She shrank back with a stricken look, as if I'd suggested something completely inappropriate. "No! That's _____'s territory." I didn't quite catch the name, but I think it was two syllables, might have started with an "I," and sounded male. Similar to "Isaac"? But it wasn't exactly that; I don't think it was a waking-world name.

I wasn't sure what was wrong with my request, but I tried to reassure her. "I just mean to chat, like we're doing now. I'd like to see you." I realized that I was drawn to her. I couldn't tell if it was the stirrings of a romantic attraction or if it was just that I found her so interesting. But the thought awakened a sensuous impulse and I put my arms around her. I recognized that it was the dream state itself that made it so easy to slip toward this sensation, and I asked her why dreams had this quality. I can't remember how I worded the question, and can't remember her reply, if she had time to make one before I woke up.

Writing this up it perhaps sounds more bland than it felt at the time. It was one of those dreams that felt really significant, even if nothing much happened. I regret that I got so pre-occupied with her name. Although my waking mind really likes to have names for things, a tendency that bleeds over pedantically into lucidity, I'm not sure if naming things is especially useful or meaningful within dream itself. It is becoming clear, at least, that the kinds of names things have in dream are not always as clear and straightforward as our ordinary linguistic appellations of waking life. Instead they appear to operate much like written text in dreams, characterized by the shifting instability of dream logic. So it might have been better if I could have thought of more substantial questions to ask her, instead of wasting the whole dream just trying to pin down her name. I do like having something to remember her by, but what else might she have told me if I had been able to come up with a more introspective line of questioning?

It is now 6:43am (it was a few minutes before 5:12 when I started so I've spent over 90 minutes writing!) and the sky outside has blossomed into an unbelievably beautiful pink sunrise. I'm going back to bed.

*It was lengthy, non lucid recurring dream. Only the first part with playing games and presence of my classmates is new.*

I was playing Baldur's Gate on my PC, but I get bored after a while and turned it off. Then my friend appeared, and wanted to see the mod for Half-Life I'm working on. First, I looked at textures first, and they were quite good. Next I turned the mod on. I saw everything from the mods hero point of view, and felt everything he felt. I started underwater, and swam up to the surface. It was cold and dark. I got out in some kind of lab, the alarm was turned on. I went to the corridor, turned around and frightened escaped from zombie. I ran until I found myself at the edge of enormous pit, filled with water. Without hesitation I jumped in, diving into water. I turned the game off, and looked into the level editor. I saw lots of errors. I thought that I'll finish the mod later.
I turned the PC off and went through the door. I found myself in some kind of research facility. One of its rooms was placed in the outer space. I saw a man opening the gate to the space, and women in the astronaut suit. She was afraid to go out there, so I tried to push her inside. For a while I was her. I was afraid of going into the void. I felt that the siut is slightly bigger, I was really slim. I went back to my perspective. I wasn't forcing her to go there anymore. I stepped back, but the void started to suck her inside. I tried to help her a few times, and I made it. The man closed the gate, while another one wanted to go into the space. He was wearing the astronaut suit, and went outside. Next I saw a woman, who is working in the labs. Tall, slim brunette with slightly dark carnation. She entered her room, and showed me a sign to come with her. Suddenly I felt that I love her. I went inside. There were lots of laboratory equipment. She called also another man, and I escaped, feeling that she will dump me for another. I was running away from that room, and chosen the doors to warehouse. I saw a few classmates there, but didn't wanted to talk with anyone. I wandered the warehouse area for a while, then one of them wanted to talk with me. She was a little higher than me, brunette with dark carnation. I know her a bit in reality. I ran towards the stairs again, and went through the doors.
Suddenly I found myself at the rooftop in some kind of city. It was late afternoon. Everything was dusty, like there was lots of air pollution. I couldn't smell anything. Everything i saw was a little distorted, and had a film grain like in old movie. There was a man with a rifle on the nearby rooftop. He was wearing dark green t-shirt, and jeans. His hair were dark brown. Two more men joined him. One was a policeman. The police officer took the rifle, but he couldn't resist and shot. Another policeman from the city shouted at him, he was mad. Suddenly, the bullet ricochet and hit the policeman in the torso, but nothing happened to him. All of them went somewhere, out of my sight. I grabbed the cables to slide to another rooftops. I felt the heat, my hands hurt. Eventually I found myself on the road. Whole city was empty. Then I found myself in my room, lying in bed. I changed the TV channel, and saw some kind of a movie for childs. Without any additional thought, I changed the channel again. But before I could see anything, the dream ended.

Tried the WBTB technique for the first time. Went to bed at about 11:00pm and naturally woke at 5:12am, I stayed up for about 20 mintutes and had a little bit of trouble falling back to sleep. I don't remember any dreams from before I woke at 5:12am but I had 4 dreams between my WBTB and actually getting up. I woke up and recorded the most vivid dream before the others, after I had finished I had completely forgotten two and had one fragment.

Non-Lucid
Questioning
Lucid

Dream 1:
I 'woke up' and got out of bed to find my dad trying to feed the two dogs. I thought I might not actually be awake because he couldn't see me but quickly dissmissed that idea when he turned around and handed me a tub full of pizza and what looked like thin strips of meat with a black streak in the middle. I poured most of it into the food bowl and found that the dogs attacked it ravenously to my even greater surprise I looked closer at the 'meat' and found that it was actually sour lollie strips with licorice in the middle. I looked at it closely for a second before coming to the conclusion that it was leftovers from the night before. My dad told me to empty the tub completely so the dogs could eat, I did what I was told and became worried that the dogs would become fat. The scene changed and I was in the car on the freeway, I looked out the front of the car and noticed one of the dogs running in front of us (we were going 100+ kilometers, that dog must have been booking it!) I freaked out and my dad swerved the car before I woke up.

Fragment:
All I remember is showing up to a restaurant with most of my family after a fairly long drive. It seemed like a security gaurd didn't want us to go in so I tried to sneak in through the back.

I'm not too sure if the first dream was an FA. I read about it and it said a vivid dream where you go about your normal day. 'Waking up' and feeding the dogs pizza and lollies isn't my definition of normal. But it seemed like the WBTB caused a more vivid dream, I'll continue to experiment with the time that I stay up because I seemed to lose the sleepy feeling quite quickly with 20 minutes.
- Have a Lucid Dream
- Bend all 4 elements
- Tell a DC I'm dreaming and see their reaction
- Fly
- Find my Dream Guide or have them find me

Quick note:
Iv'e decided to add another level of lucidity, primarily because I have experienced this a couple times but the dream I had last night brought it to mind. Basically it's me questioning whats going on in the dream but not becoming even semi-lucid.

Non-Lucid
Questioning
Lucid

I was in the music room at my school and I seemed to be cooking something with a small group of classmates. I had a recipe on the table behind me and as I turned around a boy from the class beind me was drawing all over it. It was a really badly drawn face with a messy beard and one eye bigger than the other. I got annoyed with him and told him to get out. He got out of his chair and began to leave. I was halfway back to the kitchen when I turned around and saw the same boy at the recipe book. In my rage I snatched the book off of him and tore his drawing along with two brown pages out of the book. One of his friends appeard and told me that I no longer had a recipe to cook with. I hated the fact that he was right and I left the music room/kitchen in a bad mood. It went a bit vauge and I remember exploring the school for a little bit before coming back to my friend M and sitting next to him behind one of the classrooms. I closed my eyes and vividly picured a scoreboard of some sort. M seemed to notice this and asked me what it was, I had no idea. I opened my eyes and saw that I was in the primary sector of the school where the teacher was drawing a basketball court. He told us that Ariana Grande would be leading us in this class. (I have only seen one picture of Ariana Grande before and she looked nothing like that in the dream) I noticed that she looked a lot more like Nicki Minaj. She also had short, bright yellow hair with orange streaks in it. I was wondering who the person was before I woke up.

I notice now that I become much more aware near the end of my dreams, maybe this is because I'm beginning to wake up? Whatever reason it is, I may be able to take advantage of it.
- Have a Lucid Dream
- Bend all 4 elements
- Tell a DC I'm dreaming and see their reaction
- Fly
- Find my Dream Guide or have them find me