Breif lapse in motivation -> Loss of skill?

[Ryden]

During the holidays I had an interesting three day period. The first day I had a large immensely fun dream which I managed to re-enter and eventually become lucid in. It was the clearest drem I've ever had. The lucid was short and agravating as most of mine are but it was still overall fun. I actually managed to recognise a dreamsign, as before all my lucids were just incidental. The second day I got basically no sleep as the irregular hours of the holidays had gotten my body clock messed up quite a bit. The third day I had another lucid, again recognising a dreamsign. So there is clearly an advancement here, as lucid are becoming easier. Also my dreams had been very clear for that week and I was enjoying it a lot. Unfortunately however some very disturbing things happened in the last lucid that made me lose my motivation at dream recall for a while. I am just now (about 4-5 days later) trying again to recall my dreams, and after one failed night I seem to have gotten my old recally back. This is 1-2 a night usually pretty fuzzy. I know that I am not as aware or close to lucids now as I was then, but I am alright with that because I actually prefer regular dreams. However what does worry me is that I've lost the clarity and detail that I had in the last week before I stopped trying for a while. I (although I know this would be hard to answer) was just trying to figure out whether it had been a chance occurance of clear dreams that went away, or whether I had actually become experienced enough to recall clear drems every night. If it is the latter case then I have now lost that ability. Anyone have any advice/similar experiences to help me out?

[MarthaM]

Post Holiday blues? Myself I was treated to a really virulent case of flu and have only just started to recall again. It messed up my sleep schedule and that is just getting back to normal as well.

[mike]

I too went through a long period where I was recalling many dreams every night, now for the last 6 weeks I recall close to zero. It does get very frusrating.

[TygrHawk]

As I've said before, both recall and lucid dreaming seem to go in cycles for me -- although I certainly do better with both when I am actively working on them every night (or close to it). It's always frustrating to have a dry spell, but I've learned not to get too upset, and not to go making drastic changes in my routine -- if I keep doing what I know works, it always comes back eventually.