Thread: My "first" LD and a couple of questions

Hello! I've heard about LD's before and I've actually experienced couple of them years ago (I'm 20 now), but I don't remember them very clearly as it's been long time. For this reason, I'm not going to go into much detail with my old dreams. My concern are my dreams right now.

My old Lucid Dreams have all been unintentional, I've heard of people trying to make themselves dream them, but I have always been discouraged by the things people said on the internet like: "It took me 3 yrs to ld 1st time", etc.

The other day (28th), a friend of mine send me some lucid dream post on another site. This time it got more of my attention, I searched for forums and stuff, found out about Reality Checks and whatnot.
I did RC's like trying to push my hand through the other one (at the same time counting my fingers), looking at a clock, away, then at the clock again to see if time changes quickly and while doing those I was really concentrating over the fact that I was awake, I sometimes touched walls or objects near me, thinking about how I am in the real world while doing the RC's.

Usually I don't dream often (at least I don't remember) so, sometime before going to bed, I started thinking: "I will dream this night", I actually managed to get myself pretty confident about this. I was thinking "Everything is in my head, with the right mindset I should be able to 'force' myself to dream".

I also read couple of more pointers for beginners, for example that it's good to have an idea of what you're going to do when you're lucid. I'm not going to go into much detail with this, but I decided to think about a girl I knew a long time ago and try to take her home with me
The other idea I had was to try flying again (as I've done it before, not on purpose, though).

I got in bed, watching some clips on my laptop (I usually don't go to sleep in a quiet place, read that maybe this could be a problem, I'll ask you guys about this again, below). I tried to relax my body as much as I can. There was one point I think I went into sleep paralysis for like a second (I sometimes hear voices and stuff when semi-asleep, read that this is normal so I tried to just relax and not panic)
I had couple of dreams that night, first ones - I couldn't figure out they're dreams. Not going to go into much detail with them (I remember only the first one anyway), but basicly I was running from a female cop and she shot me dead.

I'm not sure if I woke up before it happened to me or not, but at one point I got into a dream that was placed in my old classroom, with classmates around me (the girl I was talking about above is an ex classmate of mine). As I was doing mostly during the day, I tried to look at my hand and push one through the other, but for some reason this didn't work. I started looking for a clock and I found a laptop. Checked the time, looked away, looked at the time again and like 30mins to 1 hour had passed, did it again and 2-3 hours had passed. At one point the clock was moving very fast in front of me, without looking away, and at another - it got some really confusing numbers not really resembling a normal clock anymore.

This is when it hit me - I did it. I was in a dream and everything looked even more real than I expected.
First thing to cross my mind after that was to find my girl, suddenly everyone was taking a test in there, only me standing still (no one payed attention to me, though, I even got to her, licked her neck or something and took her with me, in front of everybody )
When I took her outside of the room (in the school corridor) I realized, I don't know how to get home.
I had read some things before going to sleep about changing the scenery in a dream (like spinning around, going inside tv screen, opening a portal, etc)
So first thing that came to my mind from here was to open my portal. I think I felt kind of unsure if this will work, though. Tried opening it with my hands like I was casting some spell, but I couldn't. Something like a blue magic started to appear from my hands (I really gave it my all, trying to push it out of my hands). It comes as no surprise to me that the portal that KIND OF started to appear was looking similar to the portals in Diablo 2, as I've played it a lot and this is the first thing that comes to my mind when I hear portal.
I think something fell down from the 5-10cm "portal" I was able to open, like a battery or something, but the memory is kinda blurry. After not being able to take my classmate home, I tried to fly for a bit. I entered my classroom and did 1-2 circles in the air. It was a very brief flight.

I guess this sums up my memory of it all.
There are couple of questions I have, hope you guys can answer some of them for me:

-It felt really great that I was able to do this on the first night I tried, how often do you think I will be able to do this ? I want to try LDing on a regular basis. I've read that most people do it 3-4 times a week ?
-Are there any negative effects ? Also - positive ?
-Is it REALLY important that you sleep in a quiet place, as I mentioned above I'm not really used to sleep without watching a movie or something (I was able to LD on 28th with noise - on, i was NOT able to LD on 29, with no noise in the room)
-I read that trying TOO hard can have negative effect (meaning I won't LD), could this be one of the reasons I couldn't do it 2nd day in a row and what could be some other reasons ?
-Is it easy to loose the feeling of how you fall into LD ? I'm afraid of the possibility to not being able to do it again for a long period of time (or never).