Well, you were lucid if you realized you were dreaming. You can have lucid dreams with no control and also normal dreams with control.
Don't know much about not being able to take control of a lucid dream, someone else can answer that for you

The past few months I haven't been using my dream journal I've been having bad recall. But when I was using my dream journal I did have ALOT better recall, so it does really help with the recall, totally up to you if you want to use one or not, if you have a steady recall without one, you can do just fine without a journal.