Hello, I should first introduce myself. You can me 'INTJ', I am a student of molecular biology and neuroscience. I am new to lucid dreaming but I already have a very well established dream recall; I can recall at least 3 of my dreams a night. I saw a video on lucid dreaming telling me to keep a dream journal so that I may notice recurring dream signs. First question, what type of patterns am I to be noticing? There doesn't seem to be a distinct pattern in occurrences for which to on the look out.

But now onto my main question:
Last night, I dreamt with a storyline that seemed to suggest a subconscious awareness leading to conscious awareness. To be clear, I dreamt that I must remain calm when performing my reality check or else I would wake up because I knew I must be dreaming. This suggested, to me at least, that I already knew that I was dreaming to some extent. When I performed the reality check (I glanced at my watch, then looked back at it again) I confirmed that I was dreaming. However, as soon as this happened, I lost the dream. I did not wake up fully (everything went black and I could feel that I was just lying in my bed with my eyes closed, and would allow myself to return to sleep). My question is, how can I remain in the dream once I perform the check? It did not seem as if I had enough time to rub my hands to stabilize the dream. Any help will be most gladly appreciated.