Thread: Dream Journal entries

Hello Everyone
Newbie here so please excuse any no nos that I may make until I learn the ropes.

I am just now starting to research and trying to get into the lucid dreaming thing. It fascinates me and I have been thinking about dreams for a long time now. I can still remember fragments of dreams I had months and years ago. I can usually remember in the morning what dreams I had during the night. Maybe not all the details that went on in the dream or maybe every dream but enough that I can usually tell you the gist of what I dreamed about. I think that as a result of this I actually look forward to bedtime. I very, very rarely, actually I can't remember the last time, I have had what one would call a nightmare.

Point of this post. I have started to keep a "dream journal" as is said should be done. My question to the folks here is this. I usually write my entries in the morning after I get up because my wife is a light sleeper and I would wake her up if I turned on the light to write down my entry. I also notice that if I wake up during the night I don't seem to remember any more then than I do in the morning. Is this normal? Also, when I write down what I remember, it comes out is short fragments. Is this normal or does everyone start this way?

As an example here is what I wrote in my journal this morning. It is one of two dreams that I had last night. Neither one was related to the other:

I am sort of like a clerk in an office and I am sorting thru paperwork and seperating mail from other stacks of papers. It seems that it is my job to deliver the mail. I have to deliver a couple of paychecks(?) to a couple of people but they aren't around. I have the feeling that they are former co-workers of mine. I am then in another area that seems like a large dinning hall filled with people (soldiers)? listening to a speaker (comedien)?. I am there to get some paperwork on the paycheck? ? ? I walk down an outside aisle of the hall and have to push past several people (unknown) to get back to my desk in the office area that is in the front of the hall. The desk is like a Franklin desk with lots of cubby holes that are filled with papers. I still have the paychecks? to deliver but there are three parts to them and I have to assemble these three parts so that they are complete. One part is a sheet of paper with writing on it, one part is like a cash register receipt, and the third is like a check. I sort thru the paperwork and assemble the needed documents. There are two checks for one person and one check for the other person.

I know that there was more to this dream than this because I seem to remember other details very vaguely. I can see flashes of them in my mind but I would have a difficult time expressing them. and if I tried to write down all vague details that I seem to remember, I would end up writing an entry that would be several tens of pages long and would take me hours to do. I also have a waking life and can't take that much time everyday to fill entries. Is this normal? Most of my dreams are like this, not in content, but pattern.

I can't seem to remember having any what I would call lucid dreams, but have had many very vivid ones, ones that I can remember weeks or months after I have them. I remember one that I had about a month ago where I did seem to realize that I was dreaming because I was barefoot at my former job which was as a machinist in a paper mill. I looked down and saw my bare feet, realized I was dreaming and promptly woke up. Was this a lucid dream?

Sorry for the long post but if you don't ask how do you find out.

Question of this post: Are short incoherent fragments of a dream normal entries for beginning dream journal keepers or should I try to enter more coherent story like entries? Is it important to enter all the details of a dream or is the purpose of the entry to provide enough clues to the mind to take over and remember the dream?
Thanks for any insight or suggestions or comments anyone would like to make.
alfstan