Yeah, I'm with you 100 percent. Back when I was first having trouble with the "rush of consciousness" not happening, I would do something to assert my lucidity which included extra reality checks, stabilizing when it's really not necessary, or even just yelling out at the top of my lungs "I am lucid!" it helped a lot, but lately I don't even have the awareness to do that.

Surely someone has figured out a way to utilize dream signs better than I explained it. It just seems like the only way to continue without getting burned out on RC or the act of RC causing hyper realistic dreams that resist. My first thought is to try to use a mantra as you go to sleep to leave the thought in your mind. After all, I feel like mantras really helped me with becoming lucid in the first place and with dream recall during dry spells.