Thread: Jumping in, head first...

So I'm incredibly new to this, and this is my first time seeking help with this on the web. Before this, I learned from scarce doccumentaries and a friend of mine who has had a few lucid dreams. I pick apart the dreams I can remember, and have had one lucid dream by coincidence.
Some things I observe as common themes in my dreams:
My perception will switch between multiple people, usually just after that person is introduced (and they are usually imaginary.) They can be any race or sex, and I was even an archaeologist's dog once.
My most memorable dreams are usually catyclysmic and vividly colorful. I notice the people in my dreams often overreact in peaceful situations and are calm and cheerful in dangerous ones.
As a child, my dreams were very random and made little sense, but seemed to have linear/ cause-and-effect correlation.
A reoccurring character that appears in my dream is a white male with blonde, usually curly hair in his early twenties. Between dreams, some features change, such as his tone of voice, hair length, etc. but overall age seems to remain constant. Looking at my life now, my current boyfriend looks a lot like him, but as I continue to have dreams about him, he remains physically distinct from my boyfriend's appearance. He has been appearing for about a year, seems to have no name. The only thing I can place him saying was in one of my more vivid dreams: he was close to my face and said something along the lines of "I know you better than you think." which at the time did fit with the conversation.
The only lucid dream I remember having was only lucid for a short period. I was working on a project for school when my dream shifted and the project disappeared. I remember in the same dream looking down at a set of earrings on my bed and remember how blurry they were. It came time for me to leave but the project had disappeared. I went to the couch and told myself that it would be under the couch because I wanted it to be there, I lifted up the couch and it appeared a moment after. I was so overcome with relief that I continued my dream like any other dream, and it was normal apart from a few weird shifts.
Animals seem to play large parts in my dreams, being that dog, or a sparrow trying to find a snake that stole my eggs, or even as separate characters.
I have also noticed a pattern in my vivid dreams. They most often occur after I stay up late a few nights in a row and get up uncomfortably early for school, then go to bed at a normal time the next night. Milk does sometimes help, but maybe it is a placebo effect.

Can anyone make any sense of this before I move on? Sorry if this is a weird intro. I do feel like typing all this out helped make it more concrete for my own understanding, and I would understand if this gets moved/ locked for whatever reason.