Lucid dreaming has been a part of my life for 1 year. I must admit I haven't progressed as much as I would have expected, but I am able to remember my dreams. I never used to remember them until I learned of lucid dreaming and put effort into it, and I now wake up to many adventures to remember in the morning.

Dream recall has never been a problem when learning to lucid dream. It seems that if I want to remember my dreams and set my intention to before I go to sleep, then I will remember many dreams. I've remembered 11 dreams (from what I can tell they seemed to be separate dreams, although they may have been during the same R.E.M. period) in one night and also woken up after no more than 2 hours of sleep and remembered the dark, shadow-like dreams that accompany the earlier stages of sleep.

I've also noticed many changes in my waking life. Awareness, for example, is now a part of my life; I pay attention to the events that unfold all around me much more than I used to. It also seems that my focus on lucid dreaming has lowered stress level since I don't seem to get stressed out as much. Patience is probably the cause of this which leads me to another change. My patience has significantly increase thanks to laying in bed for over an hour during a WILD attempt or (although I hate to say it) going months without a lucid dream.

Lucid dreaming, on the other hand, has always puzzled me. Although I've had some success, I still haven't figured it out. Most of the 5-7 lucid dreams I've had have been from using MILD, and I've also had a couple from WILD attempts during which I lost awareness but regained it once the dream had begun to form. Only 2 of my lucid dreams have been more than a couple seconds, and although I didn't really do much in them, they were unique experiences and are still clear in my mind. What I think is the reason for so much difficulty is learning to lucid dream incorrectly; in my first months, I jumped from technique to technique and mindlessly did reality checks. Although I've stopped those bad habits for the most part, It seems they still affect me.

This might be completely normal for my first year but I guess that's why I'm here: to get some help in figuring out how to consistently lucid dream and share what my first year has been like.