Week Progress and Struggles

My biggest challenge is getting enough sleep to allow me to practice WBTB and even just to remember enough dreams and to remain aware/focused during the day! I generally work till around 7:30-8pm and then wake up at 4:30am most days. This gives me very little time to wind down before sleep so I often find it hard to get to sleep quickly as my mind is still alert and wired. It gives me very little room to adjust my sleeping hours or practice WBTB as just getting in a minimum 7 hours I have to make sure there are no distractions. This week was not very good for that as many things went wrong (like getting a virus on my computer that took 2 days to get rid of and resulted in me not being able to sleep early).

Monday
Sleep: 10pm
Wake: 4:30am
Approx hours of sleep: 6 ½
Techniques: Performed box breathing before sleep for relaxation. Said affirmation I will remember my dreams.
I remembered one dream, three paragraphs worth.

Tuesday
Sleep: 10pm
Wake: 5am
approx. hours of sleep: 7
Techniques: Affirmation before bed
Fragments of 2-3 differnt dreams, 3 paragraphs worth.

Wednesday
Sleep: 10pm
Wake: 4:35am
Approx Hours of sleep: 6 ½
Techniques: Affirmation before bed

2 dreams, 3 paragraphs worth

Thursday
Sleep: 10:30pm
Wake: 5am
Approx Hours of sleep: 6 ½
Techniques: Affirmations before bed
Remembered a very small fragment (1 paragraph)

Friday
Sleep: 9:15pm
Wake: 4:30am
Approx Hours of sleep: 7 hrs, 15 min
Techniques: Affirmations
3 small flashes of dreams. Thought I would remember more with more sleep =/

Saturday
Sleep: 9:25pm
Wake: 11:20pm, 2:30am, 5:55am
Approx Hours of sleep: 8
Techniques: Affirmation to wake after each dream and remember them. Breathing exercise described in this thread. http://www.dreamviews.com/sleep-heal...nduce-obe.html

Used it to go to sleep on my back and it worked, though only for a short time it seems. Woke up two hours later feeling as if I hadn’t actually slept but then remembered I had been dreaming. Then used MILD and also drank apple juice.

Wake One: after two hours sleep – vivid dream, wrote a whole page.
went back to sleep using MILD visualisation and mantra – I am dreaming, counting back from 100 to 1.

Wake two: I had set my alarm to wake me at 3:30am after 6 hrs sleep to do WBTB. Since I woke up at 2:30 I decided to turn off my alarm and just do the WBTB then. I got up and drank some apple juice I had juiced 2 apples fresh before going to bed. This seemed to have no effect on my dreams however.
Wrote down a small fragment of dream – barely a paragraph.

Wake three: Wrote down 1 large paragraph of a dream.
Then had to get up for work.

Sunday
Sleep: 9:50pm
Wake: 6:30am
Approx hrs. sleep: 8 ½ hrs sleep
Techniques: Affirmation to remember dreams, failed WBTB
Went to sleep, slept dead and woke up at 6:30am Didn’t remember much dreams – fragments of 4 – but only enough to write 2 paragraphs in total.

Decided to do WBTB as still felt sleepy. Stayed up for only about 5 min, to write dream and have some calea. But then I didn’t fall asleep again. Tried for over an hour and got relaxed but couldn’t fall asleep – had too much sleep. Should have used alarm to wake up earlier.

Goals for next week
Over the week, losing 30 min each night to get minimum 7hrs really added up leaving me feeling really drained. I think I may actually need 7 ½ regularly these days but a lot of it is actually about being able to sleep soundly and not get insomnia.
Goals for this week is to:
sleep by 9/9:30ish

Focus on waking up ‘naturally’ after each dream rather than using an alarm clock so that I can have more opportunities for WBTB during the week rather than saving it for the weekend.
I will be travelling which may present difficulties or may bring more opportunities