Thread: I Want To Start This Again But Have A ? To Ask

I regularly attended this board from january this year to about April/May-ish, I'm not entirely sure. This is the first time I've been back here since then. I first started a dream journal which is currently a few hundred miles from my current location right now. Through this site, I was able to achieve my first lucid dream in about 2 weeks from when I first started keeping a journal and doing RC's. I was hoping I could continue this trend and continue to more advanced forms of achieving LDing like WILD's and stuff but I kept coming so close only to fail every time.

I was in 12th grade during this time so with a normal sleeping schedule of going to bed at about 10:30 and waking up at 6 (9-10 on the weekends), I was able to keep a steady cycle of when to attempt LDing and when to just work on remembering dreams. But slowly, I unknowningly showed signs of forgetfullness in doing RC's and remembering to write in my journal. At one point, I put my journal down next to my bed on the table and never touched it again.

I'm now a freshman in college at Penn State University - Main campus. My home is a few hundred miles east on Long Island, NY. My college experience hasn't lived up to everything I was hoping for and I feel I should try getting back to this.

But there are a few concerns for me.
1. Should I just start a new journal or wait until I go back home during thanksgiving to retrieve my old/current one, skip a page from my last entry and start a new chapter? (not a big deal, but it would also be a waste of a lot of paper. There was a little more than half the book left I think. But that would mean I postpone my starting of this until the end of November)

And the big and most important question/concern.
2. This is college. I have a roommate who doesn't go to bed the same time I do. He doesn't get back to the room at 3 AM but still later than me which could affect my attempts to do various types of _ILDing. And not just that, because the 10:30 bed thing was sort of a rule my mom enforced, that means that in the 2+ months I've been here, I haven't gone to bed at that time at all.


Anybody here in college but still able to persistantly get all their dream stuff done?

Thank you. And hello again to everybody even though most likely noody here probably remembers me.

I can relate to the journal question. I hate being away from an unfinished journal, wondering whether to not write for a while, or create discontinuity in my journals. Maybe you could do an abbreviated dream journal on loose paper until you get home? By abbreviated, I mean bullet points from dreams, not whole stories. It will build your recall back up, without being a whole lot of writing. It's a good habit as well for periods of time where we don't want to write a whole lot about our dreams. Those periods certainly come up if you're going to pay attention to your dreams over a period of years.

As far as the roommate question, that's always a funny thing to figure out. My freshman roommate was a volunteer firefighter, and his pager would go off at all hours of the night. I got him back, though, I joined the crew team and set my alarm for 4:45 every morning.

It would be frustrating to do any of the more involved methods of inducing LD's if there's a significant chance you'll be interrupted. But you can always be ready for DILD's. Keep doing reality checks, keep paying attention to your dreams, and you will probably realize you're dreaming in the normal sleep that you get. Then when you have a more stable environment, you can play with other techniques.

Personally, I only practice DILD's, because I don't want to structure my sleep habits around dreaming. I also believe that focused attention on DILD may lead to consistent lucidity. However, I like being aware of other techniques, so that when I find myself drifting off again after being unexpectedly awoken in the night, I can recognize sleep paralysis when it comes and find myself doing an "accidental WILD". So your roommate waking you up briefly in the middle of the night may not actually be a bad thing for LD'ing!

Of course I remember you - your avatar is very colorful and sticks in my memory. Welcome back!

I'd just go ahead and start a new journal. Think of your old one as a pre-college journal, and this one as during-college. Go ahead and record your dreams as you normally would. I don't think doing bullet points would be very useful. If you're not going to record the dream in full detail, don't bother. Sometimes the details you record at the time may seem meaningful, but they may have meaning to you later.

Originally Posted by JaphyR

It would be frustrating to do any of the more involved methods of inducing LD's if there's a significant chance you'll be interrupted. But you can always be ready for DILD's. Keep doing reality checks, keep paying attention to your dreams, and you will probably realize you're dreaming in the normal sleep that you get. Then when you have a more stable environment, you can play with other techniques.[/b]

^^ Good advice - this is also what I'd recommend.

I don't think doing bullet points would be very useful. If you're not going to record the dream in full detail, don't bother. Sometimes the details you record at the time may seem meaningful, but they may have meaning to you later.[/b]

I agree that recording dreams in full detail etches the dream in our memory more strongly than jotting a few quick notes about the dream. But when we are pressed for time and have only two options, write a few brief notes or nothing at all, I think there is value in the notes.

When I had poor dream recall, writing out my dreams in detail trained me to remember my dreams beyond the immediate waking period. After building reasonable recall, I find that writing brief comments jogs my memory so that later I can recall the dream itself. Recalling the dream itself allows me to recall details of the dream. Does this make sense? If it didn't work this way, we'd all be slaves to our detailed dream journals. As illustrated nicely by smilies! (The yellow guy is writing, not reading.)