side notes

Despite my increased motivation to LD, the recent two weeks have not delivered to my perhaps unrealistic expectations, so I decided it’s time to analyze what has been happening.

Negatives:
- Sleep schedule disruptions: unfortunately guest stay-over during the weekends (on bf’s initiative) means having exhilarating conversations up to 2 am, then listening to bed preparations, and I fall asleep at 4-5 am. Obviously, this makes it harder to wake up early, and go to bed early, and this is spiralling into the week.
- Increased sugar intake: I have been very tired last couple of days, mostly like because of the above reasons, but I’m thinking that eating some ultra sweet desserts before bed in the last few evenings has contributed to this. Don’t usually consume that much sugar and this dehydrates and exhausts me.
- Reduced physical activity: have not touched dumbbells/jogging, etc., really don’t feel like moving at all! I probably should go back to exercising, this does help my sleep and improves my mood. Just do it!

Positives:
-RCs: after registering at DV, I have been doing a nice amount of RCs, including starting the day with a RC
-DJ: I keep the tablet near my bed, so it’s pretty fast & easy to jot down any dreams
-Sleep recall: I have been writing down dreams every day, even if it’s just fragments, and that helps me remember more
-Just let it be: I try to have a positive attitude, perhaps my body is tired and needs more sleep, so I just let myself recharge, confident that things will eventually align
-Dream Yoga: as mentioned before I was conducting the experiment, having to fall asleep, while concentrating on a white letter ”a” on the area below navel for seven days in a row. That helps me fall asleep faster, plus usually helps with LDs, so I think I will try to incorporate it into my every night routine.

19 March Dream Fragments

As mentioned, was really exhausted last few days, so I slept like a log, didn’t even wake up to go to toilet.  After waking up still tired as hell, I couldn’t remember anything. I was beginning to get rather pissed off, but did a RC anyways. I also repeated my DS – there are lots them. If not anything else, I catch the feeling that I dreamt 3 DS, I sit on the sofa and try to concentrate (got interrupted by a phone call and conversation in the process).

Dream1 [Fragment]: I am at my grandma’s apartment(DS). She is also there and plans on going to the city center with the tram. I tell her that she will be really uncomfortable in the tram, taking into consideration the way she is dressed. She wears a green sweater, similar to one I had but never wore in the past, and she has a semi-transparent red-orange blouse from a lighter material over the sweater, so basically these are reverse and I tell her that she needs to change, so that she is more flexible in the public transportation. [there was more I can’t remember]

Dream2: I am in my first school (DS) and a schoolmate (DS) from there tells me he wants to find our teacher from second grade. We go into one of the classrooms (I am always amazed IRL at how accurately I remember my schools in dreams!), looking for our teacher. She is behind the teacher desk, her hair has greyed, she behaves like a puppet. I tell her that my schoolmate was looking for her and wants to send his regards to her. While I am saying this, she behaves like a robot, doesn’t even look at me, but continues writing down on some document, which she signs, and perhaps tries to pass to me. We leave the room and I continue in the corridor, towards the school gym. In the corridor are two girls from my high school (DS). They are happy to see each other, talking to each other. I remember during the dream that they are good friends. I continue towards the gym and see some more girls from high school. A narrator’s voice is telling me something about the two girls, how the mood of the one was actually influencing the behaviour of the other all the time, or something like this.

Dream 3 [DS recall only] – I am sure that I dreamt the guy from high school, that I called main DC in the previous DJ post…

Hmm, I could have swarn I wrote a dream down at night. memory fooling me! Either it told me "you already wrote that don, so don't bother" which is something my mind has done to me before! or wouldn't it be amusing if I had dreamed of writing in the dream journal, and assume I did.

I remember some combination of previous dreams: the number 3, the name fluffy, and perhaps a few others, and to my sleeping fuzzy brain they all made some sort of weird sense about dreams of course.

Been really out of commission, lately. Just busy, really. Still keeping notes on (most of) my dreams, so I'll have some updates to post, shortly. They wil probably be only notes, though, as I'm having less and less time to actually write out my dreams in detail. Just keeping ya posted!

Didn't sleep the greatest last night and I kept waking up, but I still remembered a few things.

Dream 1: The setting was possibly a cave-type place. There was something about a mission where one had to dress up as a girl and pretend to be distraught, until a monster or something heard you and dragged you away. In this case it was Harry Potter, I think.

Dream 2: Setting was my grandma's house or something like it. Me and a girl with long, darker hair, possibly Indian, were lying on blankets or something and talking. Either she was my moirail or she mentioned something about one. This part is a little blurry, but there was something about spawning or generating a creature, and how the one I got was named "Dogg", which apparently had been a name I had gotten in the past.

[Gap]

I was in my aunt's room? and there was a dark man there talking to me, and he held up a really small dried up/dead baby snake and was telling me how you have to take care of them or this happens, and I was thinking about how it was 5 A.M. and I was busy doing something important so I couldn't take care of that too.

Dream 3: Two? people are listening to Kankri and Karkat from Homestuck talk, and they're being sarcastic and joking, and they banter about something off-color, and one of the watchers turns to the other and concludes that Kankri must have done something inappropriate to Karkat? o_O

Fragment: I think this might have been apart of around the #2 dream: I spit a wad of gum out of my mouth and was picking pieces of it out of my teeth. (Side-note: Gum is one of the items in my memory palace, so it might have come from that.)

I was at poker last night and I had quite a lot to drink. I didn't dream (that I remember), but I did win poker. Both the league game and the cash game.

Another dream fragment again on dreams:

This was a dream about a DV thread. I think I started it. I don't remember exactly what it was about,but I remember it involved the number 3, and blackbirdrising in my dream interpreted the number 3 to mean complete, done.

I woke up, and almost managed to persuade myself to not write this down again.Grrr!

I think this is my last dream for the night. Is it my third? No, it's only the second one I can remember.

my dream recall is going bad and is making me have a ld dry spell. i have not been making detailed personal dj entries. i havnt had the time to but im going to have to find the time. im going to start with writing key points of my dreams and draw a picture too and when ever i can put more details into it. wish me luck on the recovery of my dream recall and to get past this dry spell.

I am trying an iPhone app Smart Alarm,which works by Laing my iPhone on my pillow and it detects vibrations and deduces from that my sleep cycle stages!

In my sleep I dreamed that for this app to be effective I needed to give it a name. And not like Smart Alarm, but my own pet name, a nickname. A name to give it power, A name to give me power over it. I wonder whether it's the old magic concept: if you know someone's name, you can use that to overpower them.

It was stuffy again so I had a hard time sleeping, and then I woke up out of the blue at 6 A.M. and laid there for a while. But I figured if I could get back to sleep, I'd remember a dream or two at least, and I did.

Dream 1: The first thing I remember thinking when I woke up with this dream was 'Hannibal Lector'. In it, "I" was a doctor checking over a row of patients in bed. I may have been the woman in the Hannibal Lector movies. One was one important guy in particular. [Gap] I'm slipping into a room that the guy is going to be kept in. I wrap an item in a cloth, hoping it won't be found by anyone checking over the room. I need to put something there to identify who left it, so I go look through my desk stuff for a post-it note, but I can't find the ones I'm looking for, so I end up using my "F" letter ones (except they're a solid green unlike in real life, and they're not sticky). I stick it onto something on the bed.

Note: The bed made me think of my aunt's, and I use her room as a loci in my memory palace so I wonder if it came from there.

Dream 2: I'm drawing on a big whiteboard, except it's like an online drawing board so I'm not physically drawing on it. It seems I'm leaving a specific message for someone. A woman comes up to the board and looks at it, and says something about how to draw the zodiac symbols - she proceeds to draw them in black marker, except they're just regular shapes, like circles and triangles. I am confused.

Dream 3: Me and mom are in a building, I think we're looking for my sister. I had given her this card to save on something, perhaps for $3, but she said it wasn't a good deal or something and I was a bit miffed at her. Either it was already dark, or the power then went out as I tried to catch up with her.

This was one of those dreams abut dreaming. I remember it was lengthy but alli recall now is fragments. My son woke me up by hopping into my bed, so no chance for gentle dream recall.

There was some sort of panel of judges for evaluating dreams and dreaming behavior. I remember arguing with them on some point or other. They seemed strict and conservative.

Dream Fragment 1: I'm a male DC struggling to survive in a dystopic world. I distinctly remember thinking about Lost and something similar to but not The Walking Dead. It's like I was trying to narrate my own story but couldn't decide where to make it take place. Me and a few others are making our way across a hazardous area and I lose my brother (though I think we meet up again later). Later, I see a little girl wandering around alone. I go up to her to help her, even though I know I should be keeping on, and there's someone ahead of me waiting. She doesn't know where her parents are or anything, so I take her up to a house and put her inside.

Dream Fragment 2: My grandma on my dad's side has passed away*, and I find out that I inherited all of her things. Me and my mom are in a sad state as we go to my grandma's room to spend the night. There's a big white bed, and some gifts from well-wishers, and there's a package from my grandma. I can see a letter inside and kind of want to read it, but mom seems to want to just go to bed.

*: She's long since passed away in real life.

I dreamed of normalizing numbers to enable better comparison, and plotting them on a chart.

This is actually something I am currently working on at work: an unfinished task which I shall do on Monday.

I wonder if the numbers in my dream represent something different than the numbers at work. Was this a straight dream of just working on a real life problem, and practicing it to help me do it better on Monday, or was it a reapplication of a technique from waking life to a different problem in a dream? I do not know. I do not remember anymore whether in the dream I knew what the numbers represented, I do not remember the actual numbers nor the resulting charts.

Yesterday morning I did remember some dreams and tried to store them in my dream palace, but I wasn't really awake enough to make it stick, so I forgot them the next time I woke up. :/

I lost some of today's dreams, I wish I had tried to store more before they were lost. I need more practice coming up with imagery on the fly. (I can think of some now that would have been perfect!)

Dream:

I turned in homework to an old teacher (Ms S). It was two pieces of artwork. I had to cut one to a smaller size, which was a headshot of Eridan from Homestuck. I cut a little too much on one side and had to cut the other to match. When I handed them in, the other piece turned out to be Eridan too. I said the headshot was from years ago, like it was a punchline. The headshot piece starts falling apart in her hands and turns into curly fries with bacon bit pieces. She acted like that was what she figured was supposed to happen.

The scene changes.

There was some kind of aristocratic-like party going on, the style reminds me very much of From Eroica With Love, with the more grayscale coloring - including the gay aristocrat figure. There was something about a guy who found the main DC attractive, I think someone was pointing it out to him...

Fragment: Ordering coffee with someone and sitting down together.

Was too tired, and consciously chose not to record a dream in middle of the night.

All I remember now is that it was an issue dream of some sort, but probably a REM not NREM, even at bet all I had would have been a fragment, and I remember thinking that it was not an important issue and not very interesting.

Btw, I woke up with the desire to try a WILD again only to be disappointed by finding out that it was almost time to get up on a work day. Tomorrow however is Saturday, and maybe I can try to WILD tomorrow morning.

EDIT: Interestingly I remember also thinking that this issue in this dream fragment was the same as in another dream fragment that I forgot once I moved.

It occurs to me that maybe my subconscious is trying to resolve some issue that it does not want my conscious to participate in at this time. Either that or my subconscious is blaming dream recall effort for my being too tired lately. Should I take a break and try again after a while?

Yesterday I was lazy and didn't write up what I did the day. It was quite a normal day where I walk to the gym in the morning, walking back home, sits behind my computer, maybe goes out and shoot photos etc. I really don't remember what I did yesterday except for that I went to the gym and sat behind the computer as I do daily. I had a fragment yesterday though, but too lazy writing it up, I can do it here instead: I was playing some game that my gf started (it's some girly game that I am also member on too), and I had some trading cards with codes in order to get stuffs in the games, and I was asking her if she needed any and gave the codes/cards she didn't have (those she needed). That's it.

Well, today it's been quite different day.

I went to bed 02:00, with notes on my physical dream journal: "I dreaming, remember that!".
Woke up with no recalls.
Had alarm set to 08:00, and second alarm on 09:00, woke up both times. At 09:00 I rested in bed an half hour to 09:30 when dad came into my room saying he is going away for like an hour, and that the internet seems to be down.
As he had told me yesterday we had planned to go snowmobile together, grill sausages outside etc.

I went up from bed and yeah.. now I remember that I forgot to make reality check at mornings (to prevent future false awakings).
Anyway, I went up from bed. Got clothes on me, turned on my laptop. Went to the office room and restarted internet. And yeah, internet was completely down, problems on ISP side I guess. But didn't bother doing anything.

Went to the bathroom. Afterwards I looked in the fridge, no quark I had left so I just took a glass of milk instead.
Then I went to the livingroom and played angry birds on my phone.
Dad came home some minutes later, he had been gone like 45 minutes.
We made us ready quite fast, went outside, started snowmobile and went away.
Drove quite far, about 20-25 km away, we grilled sausage over the camp fire we made.
After that done, we went back home another way, it was like 20 km back home (I was letting RunKeeper track it this time).
I drove about 90% of the way home.

Once at home, the internet was back up and I went on the computer for like an 30 minutes.
Then dad told me he will go stores and asked if I want to follow, I said I've planned to go the gym very soon, and he said he can give me a ride. So I packed my bag quickly and went with him. He dropped me off at the gym.
I worked out for an hour, about 40 minutes strength (biceps, chest, forearms and shoulders) and then 20 minutes cardio on bike.
My friend texted me and asked me if I want to follow shooting photos in the city. I said sure and he came into the city.
He had in mind to take photos inside the church, but it was closed (he had looked it up right before he went into the city).
We didn't know what to take photos of, I had my phone to take photos with only as I had my systemcamera home.
Thought of just drive back home, but my friend got idea to take photos in a building where they got library etc. The building I like most as I use to be there taking photos, be on the toilet (yeah they got the cleanest toilet in the city I believe).
We got half way home and he continued and said I can get my systemcamera with me. So we went home to me and got my systemcamera, and went back to the city.

Once in city we parked the car at a store, was free parking there.
We walked more into the city, passed by a skywalk where we shot some photos.
Then continued to the building we were going to. Went in there, up to the library, shot photos etc. I also went on the toilet as I had to do my needs.
After that, we walked back. Passed by the skywalk this time too, it was darker outside now and lights inside the skywalk was on now. Shot some more photos. Then we walked back to the car, and I got dropped off in front of my house.

Went in the house (my dads house), noticed my dads girlfriend and his son were here. Dad made food, he told me I can put on water for my spaghetti, so I did.
We ate dinner, I cleaned afterwards.

Went to my room, and sat down behind my computer. Just surfing around, lsitening to music, reading news, forums, and also fixed photos in photoshop. I always use Camera Raw, so I edit it through that, and I also tried make fake HDR photos. Posted them on Facebook in some group I am in, and also on my fansite that's about the city where I live, got some thousands likes on it (most are non-swedish and non-actives, but as one of my photo got lots of likes and sharings, the page got bigger and even more active), and about 12 people liked the photo so far, all in my city.

Anyway, I also went to store at like 20:40, I really felt like having some dr pepper. I know I told myself not to, but yeah.
Somehow I am not in great mood and feels like I don't give a *beep*.

I found a great song with great lyrics from Eminem. I think I never heard it before, even though it seems to be old.
It's named Eminem - Rock bottom
I love the lyrics and song.

Well, that's like my day today. Soon time's 00:00 here, and then a new day is here.


Tomorrow my plan is to wake up like 11am as latest, but I will probly wake up 10am if not before that. Then I will make 2x90g hamburgers for sure. And I will also bring with me the rest I got to my girlfriend that I might go to between time 1pm - 5pm. It's rest day from gym tomorrow.