Thread: Hello, my name is "Mental".

Awesome! I'm back in the game after a long dry spell. I've been trying very hard for about 2 months now to resume LDing, and finally got it done.

Thanks again to KingYoshi for his generous input and great advice that helped me the most.

Here's the dream (warning, its nothing noteworthy at all):

I'm driving down my street and pass my house which I incorrectly think is one of my neighbor's house. It now has a paved driveway instead of gravel. I noted the upgrade and drove on. I decided to turn around in another neighbor's house and noticed it also was newly paved. As I turned around and looked it over, I thought to myself "Wait a minute, Jeff is too cheap to have his driveway paved. I must be dreaming!" With a little doubt still in mind, I decided to do a reality check I learned here on the forum. I pinched my nose shut and inhaled successfully. Conclusion - I'm definately dreaming! This is nuts! Right then I consciously decided to NOT try anything spectacular right away, but instead try to enjoy my LD environment and keep it going as long as possible. I also committed to doing as many simple LD tasks that I could remember.

So I drove my "tractor", which originally was a car, down the street toward my house. As I drove I said "I am lucid, I am lucid!" Despite my lucidity I still didn't clue in that the house was actually my house, not my neighbor's house. As I drove down the street, smiling and looking around, my friend Chris approached in a car and slowed down to chat. He greeted me and held out something he wanted to give me. I took it but didn't focus on it what it was because I didn't want to get distracted. I remembered the RC where you inspect your hands to look for any morphing. So I decided to ask Chris to look at his hands. He did it and had a confused look on his face like he was wondering why I would ask him to do that. Around that time my lucidity slipped away and I woke up soon thereafter.

So yeah, not an interesting LD, but at least I ended my drought and recalled some new things I've never thought of before. Here's my summary, mainly for my own record:

1. Used a new RC - the pinch your nose and try to breath trick.
2. Immediately decided to take my time and not risk losing my lucidity.
3. Thought of another RC but didn't use it - Inspect your hands.

One quirk of this LD was the fact that between 5:00am and 7:00am I had just unsuccessfully tried to perform a WILD. My LD obviously was a DILD. The cool thing though, is that my WILD attempt seemed to be my best effort yet. I recognized my current wake/sleep status as being just right. I went back and forth between several techniques I've read about here. I did not suffer from the desire to move my body. Most important probably, was that I felt very confident this was going to be my first successful WILD. So even though that didn't work, perhaps the confidence and self reflection carried over and allowed me to finally notice a dream sign.