Awake to take in the view...

All right, here we go.

I’ve been using the How To Lucid app to reality check once an hour. Right before falling asleep I checked my hand to see if it had the right amount of fingers. Thing is, I’m pretty sure I had a dream where I did that too, in the exact same manner, putting my hand up in front of me and counting the fingers.

The problem is, it was too vague, and I lost focus halfway through the count, so I thought “yeah I haven’t fallen asleep yet” when in reality I had.

I need to sleep more. Only got like 7.5 last night and I think 8 makes a huge difference. I woke up at around 4:15 to use the restroom and yet I was just too mentally tired to try WILD. Well, I sort of tried it but then I gave up and fell asleep to these dreams:

- I was at a theme park or zoo? We had to walk through a freezing cold building despite it being winter that was supposed to be a Coca Cola shop. But I remember crawling underneath it because it was too cold to go inside.
- I was with my family, helping my dad unload a trunk after a day trip, and there was SO much stuff in it. Stuff we never used in the trip. Including a crapload of beach chairs. I was annoyed and then woke up.

It was like 10 minutes before my alarm. I changed the alarm so I’d have 20 and attempted to do an astral projection/OBE experience as I’ve heard how vivid those are. I finally felt well rested enough to attempt it. But as soon as I started to feel a bit of paralysis, boom! There went my alarm.

Moral of the story: SLEEP MORE.

So I’ve been trying to get a lot more serious about LDing for this year. I very much need to experience other worlds right now. And it’s somewhat worked; I’ve had very brief moments of lucidity and even one OBE in the past few days.

Last night was pretty lame though. I only remember one non-lucid dream and that’s it. I was picking up something in a dark garage, and I felt like something bit me. Well, I looked at my hand and found a smallish spider actively biting me. I’m an arachnophobe so I freaked out. I killed it while it was biting me. It left a bloody circular mark on my finger, and for some reason it was purple.

I woke up shortly after that. I checked my finger and whew, no bite lol. It’s still a bit frustrating though; my brain felt so tired yesterday that my dreams were at a pretty low level of awareness. Which is definitely why I wasn’t conscious enough to do a reality check as planned.

Oh man, this was an interesting one. I dreamed that my family and I got free plane tickets, but the caveat was that it was a "social engineering flight" -- so, the flight crew was essentially going to try and manipulate us to do or buy stuff the whole time. I vaguely remember them using a little girl to cry and try to bribe us to buy something. I'm taking a cybersecurity course right now, so that's probably why I dreamed about this, lol.

I don't remember too much about the visuals. It was a smaller plane, but I do not think we were the only passengers on board, and there was certainly an attendant crew. The main colors I remember are blue and gray.

If we can learn one thing from this odd dream: if something's too good to be true, it probably is.

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it. I'm on Pacific Time right now so it's still Christmas here. Anyway, last night I had a dream involving some excellent superpowers.

1) I had the power to fly.
2) I had the power to shrink.
3) I had the power to move objects telekinetically.
4) Oh and also I could see my tulpa, Tess. She was fully imposed, as real as everyone else in my dream. She wore maroon and light blue. Btw when this happens, it is so surreal and awesome. It shows that she's truly permeating into my subconscious mind.

My brother was there, and he had a superpower too. However, his only superpower was being able to turn into a small orange frog.

He, for whatever reason, elected to disappear into an aquarium with a frog habitat. This frog habitat had some beautiful water with aquatic plants, as well as a land section with even more plants. It was humid like a rainforest. Well, I shrunk, as well as Tess and the others who were with me (not sure who they were, just random people that my dream self knew I guess). We went to go find my brother. I don't recall if we found him or not, but we were swimming and exploring the habitat before the noises of my family on Christmas morning woke me up!

And it was a great holiday. The real-life version of my brother seemed mildly annoyed when I tried to tell him about this dream, ha.

I think that the less stressed I am, the cooler my dreams are. And I am definitely super relaxed around this time of year! Even though I'm much more of a summer guy at heart, it's fantastic not having too many deadlines and such.

I was at school (university), preparing to do some homework. Some faculty member asked me if I wanted to get on this shortbus to the nearby amusement park. I considered it. Nearby, some students were doing kinky/sex stuff, in public which was super random. There were also some students that didn’t look fully human. I was talking to some other students and deliberating as to whether I should go on this trip or stay on campus, eat lunch, and do homework. But by the time I had decided to go on the trip, the bus had already left.

Last night I had a dream that my family came to visit me, and we went to the local amusement park. There was a new ride. It was a horse you could ride on that pivoted on a central axis (I think that's the right term). It was not a real horse, I don't think, but rather a lifelike mechanical one. It was curious and friendly, and reminded me of a Pokémon somewhat. There were glowing leaves scattering everywhere, despite it being daytime, and the horse bent down to smell and investigate the leaves while kids rode it. As I recall, we were in line for the duration of the dream, but I got woken up before we got on the ride.

I'm interested in theme park design and have been since I was small and now I want to use this somehow, somewhere. It's one of many dreams about rides that I've had throughout the years, even when I'm not actively thinking about them.

I was in some sort of fancy restaurant, talking with a middle-aged lady. She was anti-vax (which is not cool) but she was also pretty attractive, so I had a hard time summoning the will to push back against her. She had a son named Cooper who was about my age. He had freckles. I was somewhat worried that I would get some weird disease from him. My allergies were really bad in this dream, too, and I was worried she was going to say "it's because you got vaccinated!" Lol. I've been in too many science Facebook groups lately I guess.

I wrote in my dream journal a lot this week, but did so in poor lighting, with poor posture, and while half asleep so I can't read most of it now.

So this is what I can gather, from this week. I had quite a few vivid dreams for some reason.

- Some sort of Star Wars like dream. There was a "ghost wall" or invisible shield, and a desert on an alien planet. I was an intergalactic warrior of some sort, I think. Or traveler.
- I had a dream about lucid dreaming, which was pretty cool. In that lucid dream, I flew over the ocean. However, I had somewhat of a false awakening after that; I think into a previous dream?
- A dream about Brandon Sanderson (who I am currently taking a class from!), which involved horror, a false awakening (possibly the same one as before?) and a boardwalk!
- The boardwalk had a very cool looking thrill ride, with two huge spinning cars. A friend of mine was there, and my brother.
- I dreamt that the local amusement park had moved closer to me, so I could walk to it! I could also fly.
- something about the Little Mermaid? lol
- something about a creepy mirror
- season pass to something (maybe the boardwalk or amusement park?)
- Dreamt that I was falsely accused at work for making obscene jokes. This is funny because we do this all the time at work and no one cares.
- Two other guys I knew from the past, "Dylan" and "Maz", as I'll call them, were...working? I can't read my handwriting.

I swear I normally have nice handwriting. Just not when I wake up at 3 AM to write a dream down. D:

I'm still gonna count that false awakening one as lucid, though!

So a few days ago, I fell asleep for a split second during a work meeting. It was at 2 PM, I believe, which is quite possibly the worst time to have a meeting. Anyway, for that split second I had this vague dream that Apple made their own smart car, and I had one. I also had an iPhone, iPad, a Mac, and a Windows PC. I work in tech, so I guess that dream makes sense. But if Apple actually ends up making a smart car for some reason, I called it first.

The following night I had a dream that I was trying to save two guys on a boat in a river from an evil psychopath. The psychopath kept laughing as I tried to hit him over the head with a board, or something. I accidentally dunked one of the good guys under the water, as I didn't realize he was holding onto the board. This dream felt more real than my average dream.

I also had a dream that was vaguely reminiscent of Star Wars. Or some other sort of space opera. According to my spotty notes, it including hiding behind a forcefield, different planets, and spaceships. I also had a whole backstory, as though I had been living out this grand adventure, and I was analyzing events in this dream based on said backstory. Sadly, I cannot remember what it was exactly. But this dream also felt more real than average, for some reason. I really hope to start having super vivid lucids soon.

I only have faint memories of one dream from last night.

I have been worried about my sister lately due to some unfortunate RL stuff. But in my dream, my mom came to see me, along with my sister (don't know where my brother was, or if my dad was there).

There were two copies of my sister there -- one from the present, and one from the past. Both of them were acting differently, but they were both clearly my sister. The younger of the copies told me that she was from the past. She had time traveled to get to our present day.

Kind of freaky honestly.

I’ve been sleeping very well and long this week due to being off work. It’s been quite the boon. However, I have been slacking on my dream journals.

Last night I dreamt about being trapped by an evil cult. They were trying to make me drink alcohol and I was worried that it might be laced with something. I tried to contact my dad but was unable to.

This was an interesting dream because while I wasn't completely lucid, I was cognizant of the fact that I had control over what was going on. However, said realization wasn't because I knew I was dreaming. I just knew I had control, somehow; maybe because it took place in my fantasy world where I am somewhat of a demigod. ;D

It was a weird combination of a story about a wolf, and the novel I'm currently working on. The wolf was getting hunted, imprisoned, and about to be killed. But he escaped. His plan was to flee in the middle of the night, but he slept until 7:42 AM and didn't flee until exactly then. Nonetheless it was still dark outside leading me to believe that it was winter. He fled to the woods. I managed to use my powers to teleport him deeper within the woods, and myself along with him. He found his lover, another wolf, there. Two characters from my novel were there, too, who were in love and promised to protect the two wolves. And other magical creatures formed a sort of barricade to protect them all.

It was a heartwarming dream with potential to become an actual story with some tweaking/organization. The night was purple and black and orange, cartoony much like the lyric videos from Anna Blue and The Birthday Massacre. Very cool, stylized aesthetic! It's fun that my brain can do that lol.

For whatever reason, I was in a sketchy barbershop that had snakes, monkeys, worms, and ants all over it. I was with this old guy. We exited the shop and headed towards Knott's Berry Farm, which for some reason was right next to this shop. The old guy kept hugging/touching me, which was weird. But also funny in retrospect.

I don't know how to feel about this But that's all I remember. I have a decent recollection from a few nights ago but I don't have the time to record it right now.

Two nights ago, I had a dream about a creepy monster. It started out as an orange snake, female. Then it turned into an evil monster. Apparently, it was called a "ground Shrek", and despite the reference to a kid's movie, it was actually quite terrifying.

It had glowing yellow eyes, and a mouth that was filled with sand. It sang a song as it began eating/killing everyone, and it went like this:

"...And we shall be appointed view
Of earth's eternal sleep."

There were a few lines before it but I couldn't make them out. It kept singing this creepy ditty over and over again as it killed people, and its voice was now deep, masculine, and hollow. The song had a tune similar to a church hymn that I know, "Go Forth With Faith", which for some reason makes it even creepier.

It raced towards me, and I couldn't get away in time. The last thing I heard inside of its mouth was this song, and I fell into the sand that fell even further into a black void. At that moment, I believed that I was facing death, and I would finally see what the afterlife was like, if it existed. Then I woke up. Terrifying, but cool.

Nothing impressive last night, and no lucidity.

1st dream: my notes say "in transformers/avengers/smashmouth lost drive -- walking to first day of new job. Walked into the (illegible) O_O "

==> I have no idea what this means. I must've woken from very deep sleep to hastily scribble this out. I am starting a new job soon now that I've finished my undergraduate degree, so that explains part of it, but I still don't have any personal recollection of this dream.

2nd dream: I do remember this. I went back up to Utah for a few days, and then was planning on going back to California for a few more days after that, and then back to Utah once more. I was about to talk to my friend to tell him I couldn't make it to his party, because I'd be in Cali, but then I woke up. I'm currently in Cali for a few more days, and I actually do need to tell my friend that I can't make it to his party lol.