I just had the strangest experience

OK, so. First things first, seeing as how this is my first post but not the introduction section, I'll keep my intro short.
I've been on here for a while now just lurking, but trying to achieve a WILD. Now, just about an hour ago I decided to go to sleep and start a WILD (I would post this in the wild section but I never actually achieved a WILD)
Either way after a failed attempt I fell asleep.

Here's where it gets strange. Now this had been the first time I was asleep since the night before, so within a 1...maybe 2 hour period, not only did I actually have a dream (not in the least lucid unfortunately) but it was LONG. I woke up fully expecting it to have been at least morning time, but I had to do a double take when I looked at the clock.

I thought you had to wait quite some time before entering REM sleep?
Also, Anyone have any idea for my distorted sense of time from this?

Edit: Ha, got kinda caught up in my post and forgot to actually introduce myself, ah well, will have to go do it in the newbie section I suppose ^^

Actually, I have long vivid dreams right after falling asleep, too. I know dreams are possible outside of REM, but I heard they're not usually vivid. Perhaps after being particularly tired your body enters an REM state more quickly? I'm not sure, but I found your post interesting seeing as I experience the same thing. Sometimes I'll wake up every hour on the hour having long, vivid dreams between each awakening. That's the worst, I feel exhausted the next morning.

The whole time thing, I get that too. In fact it causes panics for me really often. I'm notorious for sleeping through my alarm clock, so whenever I wake up I always make sure to check the clock and make sure I haven't overslept. Anyways, sometimes (particularly after lucids), I'll wake up in that weird dream-consciousness state like technically awake, but still dreaming, look at the clock and hallucinate that I'm late, get completely ready, only to realize I've only been asleep an hour. Haha so annoying!

Anyways, I'm new, too. I'd be interested to see what the oldbies have to say. o:

Thanks for the reply! I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one. It's quite amazing how strong the dreamworld is, I mean I felt like I was dreaming for a good 24 hours.

Sometimes I start dreaming before I'm completely asleep, which is weird because I'll be into the dream kind of passively and then my brain will pick up on another thought and I'll snap out of it. As far as the time goes, my body usually seems to keep track of it pretty well but in the past couple of weeks my internal clock has been all messed up and I'll think I overslept when I've only been sleeping for a couple hours or it will be much later than I expect. Then again, I've been on a messed up schedule and sometimes I get 3-5 hours of sleep or sometimes I'll sleep for 10-12. I wonder how much that has to do with it... has your schedule been odd as well?