task of the month

I was in this giant Lego city. I don't remember exactly what made me lucid, but I was. I somehow remembered the TOTM, so I decided to get naked. My clothes suddenly disappeared. I went to go find a DC. I found this Lego guy that had an elephant head. I ran up to him naked, and he kept trying to look away.

Spoiler for Rated PG-13 for Nudity and Graphic Stupidity:

"Look at my penis!" I shouted. I then accidentally hit him in the face with my junk. He started running away. I tried to run after him to apologize, but he ran into his house. "Well, that's done."

I then couldn't think of any other intentions, so I flew away into the sky. I was very lucid, so I had great control when flying. I saw an airplane (still made out of Legos) above me, so I flew inside, only to find the pilot passed out in the cockpit. I think I lost lucidity at that point.

There's a gap in my recall here, but then I was playing this Pokemon game in the living room of my old house, where R and C were apparently living. I was playing on an NES, although the graphics were more GameCube quality. I apparently had to catch all the Pokemon and if I didn't do it in one try, I had to start over to get the rest. I was scared when I got to the end, for fear that the NES wouldn't save my progress. But then I woke up.

So I've decided to do a 30-day challenge of using the SSILD technique. I have experimented with the technique before with somewhat mixed success. So this time I'm going to use nothing but SSILD for the next 30 days and record how many LD's and FA's I get. So here we go:

Day 16

(Obligatory note about how I've missed over a week of entries because my sleep schedule's been messed up when in reality it's because I'm too lazy to get up early in the morning anymore...)

So I went to bed late last night and got up early this morning, but I decided this afternoon would be the perfect time to take a lucid nap. I took 300 mg of B6 before I went to bed about 2 pm. Although I laid there until about 2:30 after doing the cycles, I finally got to sleep, and kind of had my first ever WILD, but without the lucidity (WID?). Like for the first time I watched the HH until it kind of popped into a dream scene, but for some reason I wasn't lucid right away. I guess that counts as success, but anyway...

I started out in some kind of video game kind of like Banjo-Kazooie, in that it was an open world but I had to complete missions to collect some special tokens or something. The missions had me going to various places, like my brother's apartment, my dorm room, and some weird island. After this, my boss from work was leading me to some place (my two dream signs are work and video games, and BOOM here they are in the same dream, and I'm still not lucid yet...). However, along the way, he leads me into this warp point that takes me to some secret area for some secret mission. The only problem is that I've already done the mission, apparently, so I remember mentally hitting the back button several times to get back to the main world. After the second or third time, my boss finally turns around to me and says "Maybe I should stop running into those things, huh?".

He finally leads me into this mall, and I find myself lost in the middle of JC Penney. There's tons of people around. I don't remember what, but something about the scene makes me lucid. I take a few moments to realize that I am dreaming, and therefore this is a dream - nothing is real (something I seem to always forget in my lucids...). I decide that I want to talk to my dream guide, so first I decide to thin out the crowd. I yell out "There's nobody here." I call it out a few times, and each time, there seems to be less and less people until soon the store is empty. I then decide to summon my dream guide, which I determined from an earlier dream is a gray-haired wolf-like creature. I call out his name several times, expecting him to be right around the corner, but he never comes. One time, however, I think I see him around the corner, so I run around to find that it's just a furry gray purse (doh, so close...). I finally decide to abandon that track and just have my first talk with my subconscious. I yell out that I want to talk to my subconscious. I yell this several times, but find no one. I see this tall shelf in front of me, so I decide to climb up to get a better view. I take kind of a Superman-ish leap and jump on top of it (that was easy...). I look out, and I see the busy mall beneath me.

Suddenly, someone taps me on the shoulder. I turn around to see this guy that kind of looks like a younger, more buff Christopher Eccleston (aka the ninth Doctor, aka the Doctor that was in the only episode of Doctor Who that I've ever watched...). All he says to me is that I should get out soon as he points to a door down on the ground. I ask him if he is my subconscious, and he says something like he is my "pre-subconscious", but he can help me get to my subconscious, but first I have to run. There's this explosion on the other side of the mall, and all of a sudden water starts flowing from the source of the explosion. I was apparently not on the shelf anymore since I don't remember jumping down before I ran towards the door he pointed out. He kind of ran with me some of the way, but we got separated when I got to the door. I saw some of my friends outside, and they called me over to where one of my teachers was sitting with his car. I got in and we drove off to the beach.

I was suddenly in my swimsuit, apparently, and I walked to the water. Before I got there, though, the guy I talked to in the mall walked up to me and stopped me. He introduced himself to me as C44 (pronounced "C-four-four", yeah, I don't get it either...). He walked me over to this group of people by an umbrella. He introduced me to these other people, 2 guys and one girl. I don't remember any of their names, but they looked like partying college kids that go to the beach to get drunk on Spring Break (aka the kind of people I don't hang around with IWL...). C44 introduced me to one last guy, a guy who didn't look like the others, but kind of acted like them. He looked like a 40-ish year old guy with the hair of Wreck-It Ralph, although he was still fairly well-built. C44 told me that his name is Amplitude, and he's my subconscious (great, my subconscious has a 90's street name...). All of us just kind of hung out for a little bit. I kind of felt like I was the most awkward person in that group, but they seemed to accept me anyway, although part of me felt that it was more out of pity than actually liking me (you know that friend you hang out with just because you feel sorry for them? It was kind of like that...). I ended up talking to the girl for a while, although we just kind of had small talk about where I was from, what college I was going to, what I was studying, etc.

After a while, I think I was either bored or felt too awkward, so I told them I had to leave. C44 came over to say thanks for coming by. I thanked him instead, and went to hug him (TOTM!). He seemed okay with it at first, but I figured that wasn't the reaction the forum wanted, so I continued to hold him for a little bit. His smile slowly turned into this look of confusion, until he finally said something, so I was like, "I'm just messing with you. Thanks for the Task of the Month." He laughed. I walked away and the dream felt like it was slipping away.

I woke up on the couch in my living room. I looked at the clock and saw it was 7:00. Shoot, I didn't want to sleep for 5 hours, I thought. But, then the scene went dark.

I woke up again, this time in kind of storage shed/garage. I got up and saw Amplitude standing in front of me, which made me lucid. He didn't say much - he kind of just stood there for a bit. "Are you really my subconscious?" I asked. He nodded and said, "Ask me anything." I froze. In all my effort to just try to arrange a meeting with my subconscious, I never actually thought of a single thing I wanted to ask him. I kind of thought of a question on the spot, but I thought it was stupid and just suppressed it. He just kind of laughed. "Can't think of anything, huh? Shall we watch the tape, then?" I turned around to see this little projection screen set up in the corner. I guess I was embarrassed of watching any tape of myself, so I decided a stupid question was better than no question. "How do I know if I've found the right girl?" I could've facepalmed myself. He kind of chuckled. "I can't answer that for you. You have to find that out for yourself." I found myself backing up for some reason. There was some ambient noise that kind of got louder, so I couldn't hear the rest of what he said. The dream kind of destabilized, and I woke up in some hotel room. I realized that wasn't right, but soon I woke up for real. I looked at the clock and saw it was only 4:00, which was a relief.

This one was a nice, long, pretty cool lucid dream, but I still feel like I missed several opportunities, but whatever. Still pretty cool.

Day 16: LD - 2, FA - 3
TOTAL: LD - 13, FA - 12

So I've decided to do a 30-day challenge of using the SSILD technique. I have experimented with the technique before with somewhat mixed success. So this time I'm going to use nothing but SSILD for the next 30 days and record how many LD's and FA's I get. So here we go:

Day 1

I went to bed a little bit after midnight, and woke up at 5:45 am. I went to the bathroom and then performed the SSILD cycles while focusing on my breath, WILD style. I distinctly remember 4 dreams, and one little scene from a 5th dream.

1. I was doing some kind of cross-country trip (except I was walking, but whatever). We were going across this long patch of ice that was pretty much a road. There were a lot of people on the ice, like it was a public pool or something. There was also a sign about how if you fall in the water, there are flying "superdogs" patrolling to lift you to safety. I went across the first time without much trouble, as it was mostly downhill and I was able to slide the whole way. The way back, however, was much harder. I got to a thin part of the ice and fell in. However, the water wasn't that cold, and I was able to pull myself back up onto the ice.

2. In this dream, I was sort of more of a passive observer. I was not part of the actual story, but I could see the whole thing and move about freely (kind of like the cutscenes in Half-Life). The story took place in some kind of hotel suite. This girl that looked like Selena Gomez was basically hiding from the police in the hotel room of this other guy. After a while, there was a knock at the door. The girl (I'll just call her Selena) ran to go hide, while the guy opened the door. It was my two RA's at college and two police officers coming to search his room. That dream soon ended, however.

3. I was working at my job as a cashier at a grocery store (don't mock, it's a summer job...). It was absolutely swamped, almost as bad as Christmas or Thanksgiving. The lines were backing up, and I was trying to work as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, nothing was going right. One lady walked out without paying after I told her her total, and on one order the printer completely shredded the receipt, and when I went back to reprint it, I couldn't find the button to do it. My supervisor came over and said something to me about showing up for work 3 hours late. I realized that I couldn't remember why I showed up so late or what I had been doing earlier that day. I thought, "Maybe this is a dream!" I wanted to take on the TOTM, but I wanted to make absolutely sure I was dreaming since actually getting naked at work IRL is kind of frowned upon. I looked for something out of the ordinary to prove that it was a dream, and sure enough, there was this big glass structure over my register, kind of like a big version of those glass shelters at bus stops. I was then confident that I was dreaming. I got out from behind my cash register and went to the front of the store. I shouted, "Excuse me, everyone, may I have your attention please?" I then proceeded to take off my clothes, which were a little tight, almost like they were made of spandex. I then shouted, "I'm naked!" No one seemed to pay attention though. I then went on to do other things, while naked, for a minute or two until I woke up.

I woke up at about 7:30 am. I wrote down these dreams in my journal, and did kind of a shortened version of the SSILD before I went back to sleep.

4. I was some kind of ghost zombie killer/treasure hunter. It was like some video game where I had to shoot these monsters while also going in the cave to collect treasure. The cave looked like it was at Disney World or some theme park or something. I had to go inside, grab this idol, and get out before the cave collapsed. I did this about two or three times. The last time, however, these three kids (about 10 or 11 in age) that I apparently knew followed me in. I grabbed the idol and turned around to find them behind me. I urged them to get out before the place collapsed. Two of them went ahead of me, but one decided to take up the rear and follow me. When I got to the exit, though, he was gone. I knew that I had to go back in and find him. I ran back through the collapsing cave and found a secret exit through this lake of some sort. It led me outside back to the entrance of the cave. I got out of the water and noticed this girl (pretty sure it was Selena again) acting suspicious. I decided to keep an eye on her. She went around this corner and had a confrontation with this lady, who I assumed was her mom. They fought, but then went around the corner out of sight. After a couple seconds, Selena came back around the corner. When she noticed me, she kind of panicked, screamed "I didn't mean to do it," and ran away. I could tell by her response and by the dramatic music starting that something bad had happened. I turned to the people behind me and told them to call 911. I ran around the corner to find Selena's mom and dad both stabbed in the heart, dead. I asked someone standing nearby what had happened, but they just told me basically gibberish. Soon after, I woke up.

5. (This fifth "dream" is technically just a dream scene. I don't remember when in the night it occurred, and I don't remember any other part of the dream other than this, but apparently I was lucid since I remembered my lucid intentions and fulfilled one of them.) I was in some kind of trench, sliding down into this abyss. I remembered that I wanted to meet my dream guide, and that he could help me. (I had already predetermined that I wanted my dream guide to be a large wolf-like creature named Bartholomew with fiery orange hair and the voice of Liam Neeson... yeah...) I tried to imagine him coming to my rescue, and he did, although he had just plain gray fur. He pulled me out of the trench to safety. After I was safe on solid ground, I asked him what his name was, and he replied with a low-pitched, "Bartholomew." I wanted to ask him some questions, but I soon either woke up or lost lucidity.

So, overall, I'd say a successful day 1 of SSILD. Technically 2 LD's in one night, which is a record for me, I believe. Can't wait to see what happens the next 29 days.

Day 1: LD - 2, FA - 0