Dreamlog

Constructive Jealousy
I'm at my Grandpa R’s house back in Wayne. My brother A and I are playing Zelda ToTK.
My brother has the white Switch OLED and is playing in handheld mode.
His game is running at 120fps and I’m jealous.
He is controlling one of the guardian constructs using motion controls in a deep valley area. The camera is following the construct he controls.
We get into some argument. It’s heated and emotional. I don’t think it is about the game.

Day-time (Nap)

Lucid in the Manor
I'm outside a manor looking place. It’s rainy. I go around the side and find the front door. I open it and it has a Mario Sunshine style doorway to jump into a level. I jump in.
I'm in my living room, but it is wider and has a tall ceiling.
Much bigger than normal. I put my hand out in front of me and starting counting fingers out of habit. Six fingers per hand.
That’s not right…I’m dreaming!
I do a nose RC several times to verify.
I keep my hands out in front of me to look at as a sort of lucid anchor.
I walk down the hall, but my dream starts to fade before I can save it.

Night-time Sleep

The Secret 10th Dungeon
I'm playing Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. I'm walking on the surface and I get the "new location" HUD text for a new dungeon.
It tells me that it is the Secret 10th Dungeon.
I can see that there is air rising out of nowhere so I jump and activate the paraglider.
It takes me all the way into the Sky with floating structures all around.
I land on a larger structure and the HUD confirms again that this is the secret dungeon.
I'm very excited about this and start to explore.

The Dragon Roost Cup
I see Toon Link (Windwaker Legend of Zelda Style) fly by on some vehicle.
I understand that this is for a Zelda-themed Mario Kart game.
Characters are all riding Sky vehicles.
On the HUD, there is a Dragon Roost Cup title, and others, similar to how Mushroom/Flower/Star cups work in Mario Kart.
Not going to say this counts for Dragon Theme, since it was just a title and reference. Not an actual dragon.
I wouldn't be mad if I'm wrong on this though...

Airship Dining
I'm out for dinner with family. We're walking down the street together looking for a restaurant.
It's a rainy night and my Dad is there with my brother and I.
We are talking about diet, but still decide on pizza.
We come across one, where there is an airship tied down. The restaurant logo is 1800s-ish looking gentleman with tophat.
The quirk of the restaurant is that the airship lands at scheduled times and becomes available for seating, alongside standard ground-seating.
There is a rope mechanic where patrons help secure the airship.

Another exciting evening in WL, but no dream recall.

No recall...drunken haze from the party

Learning Indian
I'm with an Indian family at a restaurant.
It looks like Snakes and Lattes and we are in the corner we sat in for I's bachelor party some months back.
But the table is oriented slightly differently.
The dad is teaching my girlfriend and I how to speak Indian. He shows me a few words that sound like throat noises.
He tells us that the meaning depends a lot on the pitch and speed of the sound.
I tell him there is a word in my language like that, referring to fuck. The family knows what I mean, and busts out laughing.

Grandma at the County Fair
I'm at a country fair. My grandma is excited to be involved and she is running and jumping and dancing more than someone her age should be.
Sometime later we are watching a video of her at the event at her home later in a closet or tight hallway.

Fragment
There is some kind of infiltration operation happening. Me and another person are approaching an abandoned looking home. Feels very dangerous.

Sexy Rides
It’s sunny out and I’m with my family. I’m married and I have kids. Im standing in front of a large black truck.
It has been painted in non glossy coating and looks dope.
Himawari from Boruto Next Generations is my daughter. She’s asking if me and mom are going to stay together.
SG from WL shows up and I know she isnt my wife. She’s wearing a sexy black dress. She likes the car.
I reflect on marriage and commitments.

Not much today. Ended up having a sugar overload and the insulin hit me like a truck...I didn't leave the couch until around 2AM.

Fragment
My dad is at my Grandpa R's house. He's talking about something but I can't remember what. Dream feels nostalgic.

Pre-WBTB (Targeting End of Sleep Cycle 4)

Hermione's Date
Hermione Granger has a date with an ugly guy. She has her Yule Ball dress on, the scene matches from the movie.
I'm familiar with the ugly guy since I had heard about him online.
They are having a light argument about something, but I can't hear them.
Later I'm in a Taco Ball parking lot near my regular gym. I'm checking "Hermione at Yule Ball" off of a checklist app on my phone.

The End of the World
I'm in my gym's parking lot standing near a desk setup outside. I'm working on some type of model generation software.
I can roughly draw with my hands in mid-air, and a smoothed-out shape snaps into view in 3D in front of me.
I'm working on a dress for a female model.
The female model is off-kilter with a projected x-y-z coordinate axis.
I'm trying to move the dress on the model so it snaps into place, but the image is translated off some value.
There is somebody else next to me. Might have been a coworker from WL.
A female AI-person approaches me.
She's visibly spooked, and needs to tell me something.
She doesn't trust the other person, so she goes to write it down.
Her handwriting is bad but I can read it.
She's telling me about the end of the world.
About how the world starts and ends in cycles with a calamity.
And it is about to happen again.

Hand-Eye Coordination
B from work is telling me a story about how he entered the military at a young age.
He says he ended up here in engineering because he had bad hand-eye coordination.
He gestures to a ledge high above that isn't normally there and tells me that he once accidently hit it with a machine gun.
He's talking to a group of older cohorts who remember those older days.
B makes a joke to a 3D animation modeling person that the ledge should probably have been addressed by this many years.
I tell B that my hand-eye coordination is very good, but I am still here anyway.

Post-WBTB (Targeting End of Sleep Cycle 5)

High School Well-Being
I'm back in highschool, but I'm with Max from Stranger Things and H from a band-group I formed a few years back.
I brush by Max with my backpack and accidently hurt her nose. I apologize profusely for hurting her.
She reacts by giving us a lecture about how H and I are too concerned for her well-being and she can handle herself.
I see some other people that look like jocks. I think about how they will probably go into marketing or sales someday.

Movement at the Movies
I'm in a large movie theater with my brother and my coworker B. The layout is something like below, and took inspiration from the presentation room from work:



The layout was very strange and not all that conducive to viewing a movie, but it doesn't bother anyone.
Sections C and D were higher elevation, and Sections A and B were recessed down into the floor.
Originally, the party was sitting at 'X', directly in front of a family seated in the section between Sections A and B.
We were turned around and facing the family directly, not watching the movie. It was awkward.
During an intermission, our group got up and found some open seats near 'Y' at Section C. We then realized that people would be returning after the break...but took the seats anyway.
Some time later, a man seated in Section A stood up to address the crowd. He was announcing the death of a friend of his. I thought I might know the person, B, from college who was into bugs.
My coworker, B, then decides to get up and leave from Section C, down the walkway and out. He is holding a large dagger, and transforms into Piccolo from the Dragonball series as he walks.

Boomer Time
My dad is at his new job. The office is on a higher floor, and he is standing in a hallway outside an office with a window to the back.
Dad is talking to a group of higher-ups. They seem to be his new managers. The managers are stereotypically old boomer white guys.
He's talking about his sex life with his girlfriend. He gets kind of graphic but I won't reproduce that here. The bosses, however, love it.
I have a thought about boomer culture and the "good old boys club" and wonder whether this was standard behavior in the 80's or something.

Great-Grandma Versus Orochimaru
I'm back in my childhood neighborhood back home. There's snow on the ground and sky. Orochimaru from the Naruto series is chasing me. Either he has poisoned me or I'm trying to prevent it. My Great-Grandma shows up to protect me. There are trip-wires setup around my house after I've made it. They are for Orochimaru. Setting up trip-wires checks out for Great-Grandma. She was a badass. I make it to my garage and Z from my WoW group is there. The dream presents him as a childhood friend and I accept it. I don't really meet him until much later in life.

Starry Flyover
It's night-time with a starry sky. I'm at the top of a grassy hill. It reminds me of the hill Dustin uses for his radio in Stranger Things to contact Suzie. There is some kind of military flyover happening. Maybe for July 4th? My friend L shows up in a small hatchback car. She was part of the flyover service. I guess she is a pilot or somehow involved. She has a phone-holder in the car with a woman's breasts as the support structure. Neat. She's driving me over to her place, but it feels innocent. As in, we aren't going to hookup. The town has tiny alleys and turns that no car I've ever seen should be able to fit in, but this car does. We arrive back at L's place.

Before WBTB

Russian Ride
I'm traveling internationally and I don't speak the language where I am at. I'm getting off a train or bus looking for the airport. I see another bus leaving and I wave my arms and chase it, yelling for it to stop. It does. I try to ask the driver where the airport is and he tells me (in English) that the bus is full. It clearly isn't. I wonder if there is some law saying there must be X number of open seats. Regardless, I stay on the bus and he doesn't kick me off. I make my way to the back of the bus. It resembles the CATA bus system from back home. In the back car is a girl with one leg. Short hair, kinda "bad-girl type". She has khaki pants on, and the missing leg has it tied to cover the stump. I sit next to her and ask for help. She's friendly.

Some time later we are back at her apartment. It's a big studio, kinda messy with paint and art all over the place. I realize that I'm a girl, and that she may be gay. I get the impression she might have been coming onto me.

Later I'm running from Russian agents. I'm running through an apartment complex, entering and leaving through doors/windows. I'm really high up. When I go outside I'm sidling on just-big-enough edges to not fall. I don't know why they are chasing me. I eventually make my way down from the tall complex and make it to the ground but I haven't shook them.

I'm in a down-town Chinatown type area at night. There is a big crowd of people and I'm trying to use them to escape from the Russian agents. I'm at a bar with two floors open to the outside. There are some TVs running with couches set in front of them. There are some dark corners I can hide in. I try out a few and crouch down, but I decide that none of them are good enough and keep moving. Then I stand up face-to-face with one of the agents. He looks like Dr. Brenner from Stranger Things.

Running again. This time it was short. I ended up in a stone building on a grassy hill, hiding underground. But they've just found me. There is the leader (Dr. Brenner) and two thug-types. They are going to torture me for information. I tell them I've only killed one time, and I wasn't sure if it was me or my uncle who pulled them trigger. I guess I was trying to intimidate them. It doesn't work. They casually talk to me about something and then without warning Dr. Brenner shoots my right ear off with a pistol.

I cry out in pain (S hears me and tries to shake me awake). It doesn't hurt as much as I expected it would. They tell me that they will shoot off the other ear if I don't comply.

I wake up and tell S I am OK.

After WBTB

W Aged Up
I'm at my Grandma P's house in the bedroom sleeping on the bed. I've slept in later than everybody else. I roll over and see some old drawings I made in my childhood on the wall. My grandma will have decided to have kept them. They are hyper realistic and drawn in pencil. Somehow, they are holographic. I think to myself that maybe I should get back into art.

W, my brother's son who is due in September, bursts into the room with his friend, Ian. He's four years old. I can't tell who is who and I feel bad about it. But now I know it is because W isn't born yet. One of them has buck teeth. I follow them around the house and then one kid is missing. I find W/Ian eating dish cleaning tablets under sink. Standard kid behavior I guess

Lucid Fragment
I'm in a large mall, reminiscent of one from an old marching band trip from high school. I do a nose reality check and realize I'm dreaming. I double take...crap! I was dreaming that whole time before with W! I think to myself that step one is to find my DG...but my lucidity slips and I wander off.

Conditions
Medium workout early in day
Big dinner
2 drinks of alcohol
Stayed up late
6hr/30m WBTB
Yuschak Primary Trigger (8Mg Galantamine, 250Mg Choline Bitartrate)

Notes
My theory on what happened here...sleep cycle issues. Instead of jumping into the same sleep cycle I was just in, I jumped into the beginning of a later one. I stayed up until about 2:30am playing Zelda and then set an alarm for 8:30am...so about 6 hours after sleep. I know that 5h45m has been a good target for me, so I was experimenting with a larger time to test and see if it can be improved. One problem though is that I didn't have an established wake-sleep rhythm. Plus, I stayed up longer than the typical 15m during the WBTB. I planned slightly longer at 20m but it was more like 30m. I don't think the alcohol will have mattered much because of the later timing, but it could have played a part. Lesson learned: Next time, have an established sleep rhythm. Gonna say data inconclusive about 6h/20m WBTB setup.

Stayed up too late playing Zelda. No recall. Boooooooo.

Nostalgia Sting
I'm in a house the reminds me of my Grandma M's, but the layout is also mixed with a restaurant called Bamboozle's from back home. This mixture showed up back in a previous dream back on night of Friday 3/10/23. (I didn't mention the restaurant before, description is still correct). That one ended up being lucid but this one wasn't. I'm with my brother and my old Saxophone teacher from highschool, Z. We all have backpacks on, so maybe we are just arriving for a rehearsal. Z points at my coat but I don't see it right away.

Scorpion. There's a scorpion on my chest. I don't know what to do, so I try to stay still and watch it. I think to myself that I want to appear unafraid, take care of it quickly, but I don't. The scorpion scampers over to my unprotected arm. It starts flailing its claws and tail wildly. It jabs my arm with its tail. I anticipate pain, and there is some, but much less than I expected. I wake up.

I remember mumbling something about the scorpion to S, but she was also half-asleep so I doubt she remembers.

Big Dog Station
I'm in an airport waiting area. I'm on international travel but I don't know where to. There are some big dogs in the area. I think that S would be happy to see them. One is a big poodle-looking black dog. I also see a big long-haired german shepherd looking one. I'm talking to my brother on the phone, and he is responsible for my bag being missing. I'm upset with him because he made the decision to leave it behind so that I could make my flight. I tell him that there are things I need in the bag, like my $300 headphones and work ID.

Fragment
I have vague recollection of a smokey-train station as well. Most likely connected to the above dream about travel.

I'm coming off of about 2 months break from journaling to record this dream and more moving forward, since Summer Comp is about to begin

Cold Visit
I'm at my sister's apartment, but I'm not welcome. There is a party happening with video games on the main living room TV. There are a lot of people there easily crowding the tiny apartment. Nobody explicitly tells me so, but I know that I've shown up uninvited. Some time later I'm walking outside to see N. It's night and winter-time. The scene reminds me of my brother's college campus from years ago. Snow is falling and it looks pretty against the street lamps. I don't feel cold, though. He's upset with me which reminds me of the last time we spoke in waking life. He seems to have cooled a bit since that discussion, but the result of the discussion is the same as before. Progress isn't made.

Making a note here to remind myself about WBTB timings. This includes time spent sleeping prior to WBTB as well as time awake before returning to bed.

Timing for Pre WBTB
Commonly practiced timings are 4.5hrs and 6hrs. These are probably based on 1.5hr sleep cycles. For example, 4.5hrs is 3 cycles (1.5 x 3) and 6hrs is 4 cycles (1.5 x 4).

Timing for Post WBTB
I've had success with staying awake for just 10m in all my previous attempts. I don't know if I would have higher quality lucid dreams if I were to increase this time. I've had several good lucids, but no excellent ones yet.

Rankings
Here is a ranking of my recent lucid dreams and their WBTB timings:

Night of Friday 3/10/23: My 1st lucid in a long time. Probably my most exciting of the recent bunch. Giving this a 3/5. ?hr/10m.

Night of Friday 3/24/23: Exciting WILD transition, but from what I can remember the dream itself was a nothingburger. 1/5. 5hr/10m.

Night of Friday 3/31/23: Another good lucid. 3/5. 5hr45m/10m.

Night of Saturday 4/8/23: Decent. 2/5. 6hr/10m

Summary
Based on the last four lucid dreams, there might be a bias toward 6hr being better than 5hr. Perhaps they would be better if hitting closer to the 4.5hr mark. Also worth experimenting with the time awake, since I have no data for longer or shorter wakeful periods. 10m seems shorter than what others suggest. Maybe lucidity quality could be improved by increasing it. Overall, more data needed.

Next Steps

Experiment A: For the next four lucids, use 6hr/15m as a timing. This will test whether 6hr is consistently better, as well as whether 15m gives more lucidity compared to 10m.

Experiment B: For the next four after A, use 4.5hr/?m as a timing. Evaluate the ?m timing based on results of experiment A.

Experiment C: For the next four after B, choose the best of both worlds and evaluate.