Bm, I wouldn't worry too much. I've been trying to lucid and having a similar hangup between recognizing I'm in a dream and actually completing on that task. I tried a different approach last night and had seemingly untriggered lucids twice. As I was falling asleep, I envisioned all the places that normally come up in my dreams (my apartment, my family's home, my old home, school buildings, etc) and tried to warp around these places as fast as I could. In each place, I repeated to myself "I'm dreaming" and then moved on to the next one.

Sure enough, I wound up outside a permutation of a dorm on campus, and was lucid immediately. RCs are probably still worth your while to work on--that way you can LD regardless of where your mind drops you.

Good luck, and stick with it!