Hi guys. As the title indicates, I am new here. I found this site because it was mentioned in a YouTube video I was watching, and now I've been snooping around for about an hour.

So, I haven't had a lucid dream in a long time. When I was a little kid I used to almost always be aware when I was dreaming––but usually I would just be scared that I was dreaming rather than happy about it. But I do remember being able to control my dreams to a certain extent, particularly being able to sort of "blink" and change my surroundings.

Anyway, I'm 19 now and I'm not so good at it anymore. I can usually remember my dreams pretty clearly, but when I'm within the dream I don't typically realize I'm dreaming. Occasionally I realize it toward the very end of the dream, but then I wake up (maybe because I get too excited about it or something). I also have a lot of false awakenings in my dreams, and I usually wake up paralyzed from my dreams... I don't know if these things are necessarily important to lucid dreaming, but they happen to me a lot.

So, recently I've been trying to work towards lucid dreaming, astral projection, etc. I've started by keeping a dream journal and trying to figure out the patterns in my dreams. And I'm also trying to remember to do reality checks and whatnot. Hopefully I'll learn some more useful techniques here.

Okay, I'll stop ranting now. In conclusion ... I'm very glad I found this site and I look forward to meeting new people and learning new things. If you have any advice, questions, etc. feel free to let me know.

~Brigid