The Dichotomy of Dream Journaling

**Batch** · 01-05-2013 09:59 AM

Sometimes it seems to me that there is a strange sort of dichotomy about really working at the dream journal. Any of you who have gotten to know me and my dreams have probably noticed that they are occasionally really long, really detailed, and (to me, at least) really fun. I push for this. I strive for this. I try to find foods that might help, techniques that might improve dream recall or dream vividness.

And yet ... the more I succeed, the less I can keep up with them, which may lead to dream recall suffering a bit once again.

Most of my fairly average dreams take close to an hour to note down on paper, and then close to 45 minutes to type in. The occasional really good one may take an hour and a half to two hours. Have a couple of quite good dreams a night, and it really can take a while to get all this stuff transferred over. Too bad optical character recognition is unlikely to be able to decipher my microscopic, somewhat messy printing, or maybe I could save almost half that time by scanning dreams in.

But anyway, I find it kind of interesting and ironic that success at improving dream recall may actually (in more ways than one) lead to a worsening of dream recall once again ...

Thoughts?

**Carrot** · 01-06-2013 11:33 PM

Excitement maybe? It seems weird but sometimes the more you try to do something, the harder it becomes. Maybe it's a psychological thing that if we grasp hold onto something too tight, we lose it even quicker. I used to be really concern over my dreams and I expect myself to remember at least one (or preferably as many as possible) dream a day. Now I feel that if I really can't remember a dream, it's fine since I'll get another round of awesome dreams the next night and I might remember my dreams if I move around and look at the daily things in my life.

**Iokheira** · 01-08-2013 12:49 PM

I sort of get what you mean. You've seen my dreams, and those take forever to type in. And then you have like four-seven of those. I've been thinking about it more as my recall has been improving, there is no way I can keep up when school starts. So maybe you could just type the most interesting ones, and the basic ideas from the others? Looking back on my old dream journal I can still picture myself in the dream almost exactly, even though it was years ago. With typing it up it seems to be more what you want to share vs what you experienced, and when what you experience vastly outweighs what you want to type, you have to pick and choose. Either that or sit at the computer for a million years.

I also have a tag journal rather than a dream journal, it saves a ton of time. That could cut out at least an hour per dream for you, assuming you could still remember your dreams with just tags.

I don't know if that helps you at all, but those are my thoughts on it.

**123north123** · 01-08-2013 07:41 PM

I usually spend 15 mins max when journalling a dream. I just try to get the basic plot plus anything that strikes me as interesting. I personally think it unimportant to write down every detail. I usually can remember the details as long as I write down the summary.