Given the meriad of hits on Google and the Lucid Dreaming forums that abound...I'm clearly coming late to the party, but...

I was watching the news last night and they were talking about the Tucson shooter and that this crazy guy was obsessed with "Lucid Dreaming". Then the reporter started to explain Lucid Dreaming and for the first time I realized there was actually a name for what I've been doing since I was a little girl.

I have been drescribing my dream process to friends, family, and even doctors for years (and years)...and they'd just look at me with a "you do WHAT?" look on their face...I never had anyone ever say they understood what I was doing and that they also did the same thing.

When I was little, I loved bed time because that's when the real play time began. There have been times it would take me several waking hours to determine if something I dreamed really happened or if it was a dream...sometimes I never figured it out. I do better with that now that I'm an adult.

I don't ever remeber a time when I couldn't control my dreams: Action/adventure (typical stuff that goes with that), sex (a lucid dream orgasm is pretty fantastic), problem solving (as a kid I'd figure out math problems I couldn't while doing homework, I'd practice "seeing" my text books so I could "see" them while awake taking my test and mentally "read" the answer during test time, as an adult I've processed work problem/issues, etc), re-starting scenes in my dreams to make it more what I like, being writer, director, and the actors within my dream while at the same time "watching" my dreams in an "out of body" observer kind of way (the way one would watch TV) - all the while aware that I was dreaming - well not dreaming really, but asleep in bed and that I was creating a mental story in my mind to enjoy while I rested.

For the last several months I have chosen to not Lucid Dream...allowing my dreams to just do whatever and turning off my mind. I'm still aware that I'm dreaming, but I haven't been controlling them. I had a baby a few months ago and being sleep deprived I have just been too tired to control my dreams. So I've decided to suspend that for a while.

Anyway, I knew I couldn't be alone in the way I dreamed...I knew there had to be a name for it...and now 30+ years later I finally know that my dream process doesn't make me nuts...that its a real thing - other people do it and aspire to do it - and I've just been lucky enough to have been doing it my whole life.