Awake to take in the view...

I did have a pseudo-lucid dream (woke up right away) over the weekend. But last night? Only hypnagogia of playing the excellent Orion Drift in VR. I tend to remember hypnagogia more because I will sometimes wake up, write it down, and then go back to sleep. I slept like crap last night though -- tossed and turned for about an hour. Just trying to solidify this dream journaling habit

All I had was hypnagogia

In the hypnagogic imagery I was playing Orion Drift VR and practicing soccer. It makes sense since that's what I did on lunch break as well.

Hypnagogic Imagery: Everyone had collars on their shirts that were named after them. For example, a guy named John had a collar named Jollar. Thanks for that, brain.

I love a woman who can beat me at video games. (I don't know if this was hypnagogia, a dream, or what. That's just what my journal says lmao)

The next note on my dream journal says either "On Choir" or "On Chair"

Vague non-lucid: Pro gray band (illegible) and dude at a quiet auditorium who was praying (?) all boss sings to ??? (illegible)

I mean, yeah, I vaguely remember a dream about an auditorium, but that's it.

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.

Hypnagogic Imagery: I saw the letters ZZ, I guess because of sleeping lol.

Non-Lucid: Some show about guys, "gal pals", on a plane with people in economy and others in main cabin. It was not a full flight.

Non-Lucid Fragment: My dad got (illegible -- ants?). Also: Do you want to stay for a movie? I said, well, 7 PM is a little late. He said "We're not getting dinner anywhere so I would keep score, but we would (illegible) cake ? (illegible) later.

Yeah, I can't decipher that one. I'm gonna have to count it as a fragment I'm afraid.

WBTB attempt: Failed. However, I did slip back into a non-lucid, though I have no memory or notes of it I fear.

Not great, but when work keeps me up late, sadly 'tis a gamble.

My numbering was off. Whoops.

Holy crap, I took up two whole pages of writing. Let's see how much I can actually read from last night's notes.

Maybe the recipe is staying up later than usual + sleeping in later than usual + utter exhaustion by EOD. Plus, waking up multiple times in the morning then deciding nah, I'm going back to sleep.

• Hypnagogic Imagery: Wicked but wand-car. (What does this mean? I have no idea. But I wrote it down with the tag "hypna" next to it, so. )
• Dream: I was playing a spooky backrooms-themed video game.
• Dream: I was with my extended family in a spaceship, trying to make plans. We were hiding under an invisibility cloak that covered the entire spaceship. It was held together by Sonic. (????? What does this mean, version of me who wrote this at 2 AM?!) And then the whole world morphed into a backrooms game (like the earlier dream) and it had spooky noises.
• Fragment: Another dream with "some white dude" (geez lol) whatever that means.
• Attempted DEILD; failed.
• Dream: I was detaching a multicolored gel pen from a wall that it was stuck to, using a pair of scissors.
• Dream: I was taking a survey about satisfaction. It also asked me, "What scares you the most about life?" I don't remmeber what I answered.
• Dream: I was at a POOOOL (taken verbatim from my journal; I think I fell into a microsleep while writing the Os and my hand just kept going) with 2 others, including a lady who was not wearing any bottoms. LOL. We were plotting out our next move, like Pokemon. (???? I guess we lived together, but I don't know what Pokemon has to do with anything) I said "If it's not tropical, I'm not going." One lady in the pool suggested moving to this beach urban city, but it wasn't tropical. IIRC the weather was more like the Pacific Northwest. It was very pretty though, the image that came to my mind, with black buildings, foggy skies, greenery, and the ocean.
• At this point, it was morning, but I kept going back to sleep. I did a series of 4 WBTBs, but they were all extremely short -- I just got up to pee then went back to sleep. I failed all 4 of them. I could have stayed up longer but I was tired and I knew I had work tonight so I had to get my rest when I could. This did allow for more non-lucid recall.
• Lucid Dream: DEILD success but very briefly. T and I were in a house. I had a body pillow AGAIN (is this going to become a recurring theme? ha) and I was surrounded by some weebs "but still in@sure" -- I don't know what the part in quote means. I was confused as to why I had brought a body pillow to breakfast, because that's what we were doing, having breakfast. I remembered that I could teleport, so T and I did so together, back to our hotel room to drop it off. And THEN of course I went lucid. Because my normal reality checks didn't appear in my dreams, but teleportation did, and THAT is what made me lucid. Teleportation. Self-consciousness. And. Freaking. Body. Pillows. Unfortunately, I woke up before I could start my next task, flight, and immediately tried DEILD/chaining.
• DEILD attempt: I felt a lot of pleasant buzzing but still woke up. Need to keep persisting. Trying to relax.
• Dream: I was working at an office, but I kept falling asleep while trying to type terminal commands into Git Bash. I kept messing the commands up as a result. The other employee next to me was tired too. I checked some fun site for some reason, but my dream-boss saw me doing it. Also, there was a choir in the office singing for some reason. Falling asleep in a dream is a weird experience. It kinda felt like just...losing consciousness altogether then re-entering the same dream a second later.

This is tied with my first night for my weakest night yet. Actually it might've beaten it. And I didn't do much during the day either. Was busy. I only get a 1-day weekend this week due to work (really need a new job).

I have not figured out how to have awesome LDs consistently. However, this competition so far has really helped my recall. I am going to keep on this trajectory and hopefully I will start to finally become a skilled lucid dreamer after all these years.

Until then....Here's my tiny little baby entry.

Dream (Non-Lucid, brief): I was lost in a creepy but pretty forest with occasional houses. There were these streets called Drury Lane (but no muffins ) and Creep Lane (how original).

Hypnagogic Imagery: I had just played Orion Drift VR shortly before getting ready for bed, and my brain played a loop of me riding on the zip line/hyperloop thing. Arm raised in the air and space zooming past me I could also feel the controllers in my hands.

I am hoping to play a lot more of that game in the future so it will be interesting to see if it takes more of a presence in my dreams. I'm too tired to do it right now, though.

Non-lucid: Pokemon got a dark theme. (I don't remember exactly what this meant from my journal.) I was at the local pool but riding the steep water slide that is unnamed but I like to call The Purifier (because it will make you repent of all your sins). It wasn't steep though, unlike its real-life counterpart, and it was filled with kids. It was a super tame slide. I either rode the slide or got out of line, and saw my dad and my sister. My dad started asking me questions about myself but referred to me in the third person, like I was not actually myself, which was weird.

My brain loves NOT doing any reality checks in my dreams! I need to drill them further into my subconscious, it seems...practice, practice, practice. I hope I can have more lucids during this comp, but even if I don't, I want to keep these good practices going as I think this will really help me take all this to the next level.

• Hypnagogic Imagery: My brain was trying to write pseudocode for a bug as I was falling asleep, but it was trying to do this using heavy metal growls. It was like the music was playing and it somehow corresponded to my coding. I woke up a bit later, wrote it down, and fell asleep for real.
• Non-Lucid 1: I was at Disney's Polynesian Resort (OK brain I get it, you want to go back to Disney World!) but I had a flight back home in less than an hour, was nowhere near the airport, and I didn't notice the time somehow. I was traveling with some dream character who I knew in the context of the dream. They said they knew we were going to be late, but they were just having so much fun that they didn't want us to leave yet! I was mad because we were going to miss the flight and experience delays with work, etc.
• Non-Lucid 2: I was in the car and some ripped dude was in the car with me. This dude insisted on driving and wouldn't let me drive. Then, somehow, the dream dissolved into some YouTube video I was placed into where some gymbros were playing on a shopping cart at the grocery store. One of them wasn't wearing any shoes and I was super grossed out. I don't remember if I was in a YouTube video, if I was watching it, or if they were just filming one.

I almost remembered a dream upon waking, but unfortunately it left me as I was grabbing my notebook and pen to write it down.

1. Dream fragment -- talking about water slides
2. Fragment -- I was staying at a hotel, and took a nap (within the dream apparently)

Yep! That's it. I am trying harder to not let work stress creep into my evenings as I think that doesn't help

1. Hypnagogic imagery that consisted of me going to a nearby water park and seeing lifeguards, going down the slides, etc. Altogether quite pleasant.
2. (Full non-lucid): Water parks again! This is a very common dream for me. I was going down an indoor water slide. The slide tower had 2 different slides you could go down, and each of those 2 slides had 2 different tracks -- one chill and one more intense -- so a total of 4 tracks.

I went down one of the chill slides first. I was wearing my Zion Half Marathon shirt but took it off before getting on, and held it up in the air while I was sliding so it wouldn't get wet (dream logic).

Somehow, as I was sliding, a lifeguard told me that if I moved to the left side, where the slide somehow diverged in two, I would get a way bigger drop. I managed to shift over, but then my alarm went off right as I started to go down the slide. D:

I missed posting yesterday. Or, more accurately, I was so tired that I couldn't bring myself to sit at my computer and I just passed out instead. Ope.

I'll crank this one out as quick as I can, as I still have a few more things to do before bed tonight. But there's a lot. SO

NIGHT 6 (4/19-4/20)
1. Dream fragment: There was a show called Tigers and Tiaras.
2. Attempted DEILD; was not successful.
3. (full non-lucid) I was in some place that looked vaguely like a Japanese restaurant, fighting some monsters. Some had dangerous spit that would make you go off the rails a few hours after getting hit by it. I grabbed a large poster and almost knocked over some candles with it -- according to my knowledge in the dream, they were my mom's candles, though why my mom had brought candles into a restaurant I can't say. This was because I was in such a rush to get the monsters out of my way, but it made me nervous, as I did not want to start a fire.
4. I was at a carnival with rides near -- you guessed it -- Disney World. The mouse is plumbing the innermost depths of my subconscious with a fine-toothed comb.

I won a choice of gifts from a game or contest. I wanted to use the Fast Lane privilege at the carnival. Another alternative prize was a sock, and another alternative was a collection of Christmas-themed gear. I don't remember which one I selected, but probably the Fast Lane. We (me and who? I don't know) were then eating breakfast and watching the carnival rides warm up for the day. Then the announcer said my name, pronouncing my last name incorrectly, announcing that I had won.

The announcer seemed chill, but very tired.

I had to get some stuff done -- fun or work, I'm not sure -- before a plane flight out of Florida that I had at 4 PM that day.

5. False awakening! I had one of my classic "Writing in my dream journal" false awakenings. Unfortunately, I didn't go lucid. I think it would be smart to just do a reality check, and really question everything, every time I go to write in the journal. When I woke up, whatever I had written wasn't there, just the recordings from the earlier dreams listed above.

NIGHT 7 (4/20-4/21)

1. Hypnagogic imagery, in which I listened to the Easter piece we had performed in church choir that day.
2. (Non-lucid, but on the cusp of lucidity) I was lost in a creepy world, trying to save a bunch of princesses, including Elsa from Frozen (like I said, the mouse is deep within my brain -- !!!!), using a magic necklace to get past obstacles. We were inside some sort of vast, sprawling building.

But, they all ditched me, instead siding with the evil organization that trapped us there in the first place.

So I was left betrayed and alone by Elsa my beloved. Sad day.

Oh, and there was lava on the floor. Green and with the properties of honey. I couldn't tell you which properties -- don't remember; journal doesn't say. There were different chambers within this room that served to connect people to ancient princess powers.

Then, wishing for a safe space, I immediately found a chamber that actually led me outside, and holy crap. Beautiful night sky with stars and pine trees, and chirping crickets. I sat there in some random swivel chair, spinning myself around to calm down and relax. It was also nice and cool out there. Very hot inside the building. Lava will do that.

I was being protected then by some nice guardian ladies, but I was afraid that they would be overtaken by the now-evil Disney princesses.

While I didn't become fully lucid, I did have a slight influence over the outcome because when I wanted a safe space, it appeared. I really think I was just one more piece of introspection away from lucidity, in retrospect.

Instead i just kept twirling around and watching that starry night sky.

Who knows what happened to that necklace. Must've still been wearing it, but my brain forgor.

3. (Non-Lucid) I got my own backpack with fandom related merch in it! OK, so in addition to Mickey Mouse, the upcoming SDCC is also permeating deeply within my subconscious.

4. Hypnagogic imagery again -- Gaming-related, as I sat there half-awake 10 minutes before my alarm. Man, if I had been able to sleep another 30 but with that wakeup, I probably would've had some lucids. I experienced some buzzing as the beginning of SP and a sensation of vibration, but I was unable to launch into a WILD/DEILD due to the time constraint. Dang it!

1. (Fragment) I was waiting in a line somewhere.
2. Woke up, couldn't recall anything, decided to write down "No recall" in order to keep the habit going. It should be automatic anytime I wake up.
3. (Fragment) Man, that Disney trip I took earlier this month must've really permeated into my subconscious. I dreamed that I was at the Disney parks buying merch. In parentheses, I have written (x2-3). I do not remember what this means.
4. Full Lucid DILD: Here we go. I woke up at 5 AM, but my alarm wasn't until 5:15 AM, so I went back to sleep and immediately slipped into this dream.

Started out non-lucid. I was walking around San Diego, carrying a large body pillow with an anthropomorphic character on it. I was feeling rather self-conscious, like WHY do I have this and WHY am I walking around town with it?

A car drove by and I felt even more embarrassed, like can't I at least take this thing back to my hotel room?

Then I thought "Ah yes, I can teleport. I will teleport back to the hotel room now."

So I did.

I appeared back in the hotel room. There were bottles of lotion (of course ) and unpacked luggage in a pretty big room, and my cousin's stuff was there too. Great, so now my cousin is going to know about this giant body pillow.

I then idly realized that teleporting is not a thing that can happen in waking reality. Hmm... OH --

-- LUCIDITY.

So, my first instinct was to teleport again, onto a roller coaster. It was wooden. As I was going up the lift hill, T. was there in the seat next to me. We were not in the front seat -- closer to the back.

I then remembered -- oh yes, the competition, and my 3-step tasks! I summoned a clarinet and immediately played an F-concert scale (G Major in clarinet transposition) on the roller coaster. Then I played some random crap; I can't remember what.

My brain was not entirely clear -- I remember thinking "well I don't want to drop the clarinet off the roller coaster" but then logic snapped back into place. The scene was somewhat fuzzy, and not as vivid as I might have hoped. I was going to start stabilizing, and then figured I would try flying after I had finished on the roller coaster. But, then my alarm went off.

(It was nice and cold in my room, which is rare, because I live with my brother who is always cold, whereas I am always hot. Apparently, he finally didn't touch the thermostat. :v I think that helped a lot with my sleep quality.)
___

I also finally signed up for the DreamViews Discord server. I didn't realize we had one, even though it has presumably been linked up top for a long time. I had already hit the Nitro limit of 200 servers (thanks ADHD) but finally found an inactive one that has been mostly dead since 2021 that I didn't mind leaving.

All right, here we go. Only non-lucids, I fear.

1. This squirrel would hang out with us. Some sort of magical enchantment or technology had caused him to be able to talk with us. He talked and pretended to not be able to around strangers. He would also steal your sweets as you were eating them.

Now, if another animal was reported to be able to talk, he would be extremely skeptical about this. Like nope, I'm the only talking animal around here.

2. Hypnagogic imagery. After waking up in the middle of the night and starting to fall back asleep, my brain repeating the following phrase: "We don't need to have the perfect family to talk. We just need a pair of tongs." It was accompanied by the sound of someone clicking tongs together.

Oddly ominous. Or maybe I was just hungry for BBQ.

3. Illegible/gibberish. I fear I'm not gonna be able to count that.

4. Illegible/gibberish. What happens is sometimes when I am really tired waking up at night I think "no I must record!" and so I do but I fall asleep and my hand keeps writing gibberish. Well, it was worth a shot.

LAME, only three fragments!

Oh well, some recall is always better than none!

1. I was at Disney World again, but I can't remember anything about it.
2. I was selecting a hotel from a list (Thanks, San Diego Comic Con hotel selection process, for entering my nightmares. )
3. And finally, all of my social media accounts had been either cropped or hacked (I can't read my half-asleep handwriting) as a sabotage attempt.

Hmm. What if it was both, and someone hacked into all of my accounts simply to crop all of my pictures? :O