Not sure what to expect, help!

Hi, so I'm new to this forum and the whole concept of being "lucid" but from what I've read iam very interested!!
So I know in the past I have had dreams where I either say in the dream I know I'm dreaming, or I'm talkin to someone and telling them that I'm just dreaming, but I don't think I was lucid, considering from the experiences that I've read was nothing like that, so what does that mean? Was I in the first stages?? Lol like I said I'm not sure what I'm looking for, or is being lucid like you'll know for sure? Also I've had couple dreams where I've purposley woken myself up becuase I didn't like what was goin on in my dream, not sure what that means either! Also today, I had a dream I looked at my dream journal becuase prior to that I'd woken up, wrote down what I had just dreamt, went back to sleep, than dreamt I was lookin at that but it looked totally different, but clearly I didn't clue in. Haha so it this a start at least? Sorry for the many questions, but I want to learn more and know what to look for! Thanks for reading and any suggestions!

It sounds like you're off to a pretty good start. The first dreams about telling people that you are dreaming are most likely semi-lucids, in which you are kind of aware that you're dreaming but have no major powers or anything. You will start to gain more control in your dreams over time. This can be helped by just becoming more aware in general. Preform reality checks throughout the day and maybe even try All day awareness (ADA) in which you spen 20 minutes or so in a "hyper-aware" state paying attention to all 5 senses. This will carry over into your dreams and hopefully give you more control overall.

As far as the looking at your dream journal in a dream and it looking all jumbled and different, that's often an effect of dreams in general. Writing is often skewed and will look like a bunch of wierd, indecipherable symbols. This can be used as a reality check or a method to bump you into lucidity. It's all about training your mind to recognize these oddities and question them, leading to lucidity.

Good luck! :)