I just joined a few minutes ago and I thought I'd post an introduction here in the Newbie Zone. Hopefully I'm doing this in the right place.

Though I'm new to Dream Views, I'm not totally new to Lucid Dreaming. My first Lucid Dream was around second or third grade (maybe even first). I had fallen asleep on a Sunday night, especially excited, since Monday was a holiday. However, that night my dream took place at school. Something didn't feel right and I finally remembered that I didn't have school the next day. I concluded that I must be dreaming. After that I sort of lost control, but I was able to steer the dream in a more fun direction first.

For years after that I held onto the notion that dreams could, in fact, be controlled. Occasionally I would tell somebody about my experience but I didn't do too much with it and my life was devoid of lucid dreams until four years ago (I'm doing a lot of guesswork on the years here. I'm 15 years old, by the way).

As I grew older I started having lucid dreams once every few months. Usually I had some problem with clarity (such as darkness, blurred, etc. ) But when that lucid dream came, I already had a goal in mind. I would take off and fly. It was one of the most exhillarating experiences I've ever had. The dreams weren't coming often enough, and they weren't long enough to really enjoy them though. That's when I finally looked it up on the internet.

I finally found out that these weird "controlled dreams" had a name. And so I read some more stuff about it. I went through LaBerge's FAQ (on lucidity.com) and learned a lot more. Some of it seemed too complicated back then though and I fell out of it for a while.

Then , a few years ago I was on the internet and stumbled across LD4all. I read the forums, started up a dream journal, and finally found a reality check that worked well for me (the plugging the nose and breathing in one). I was never an active member, but I learned a lot. I bought "Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming" and had my two most vivid lucid dreams yet.

Those two dreams were almost a year ago, but due to school and other things I had a hard time getting into lucid dreaming over the past year. Lately, I've been getting a lucid dream every week or so and I feel ready to really jump back in. By joining Dream Views I hope to be able to learn a lot more, and improve the clarity, frequency, and length of my LDs as well as gaining more control over the dream world itself (I have a hard time breaking from the norm in dreams sometimes.)

I look forward to getting to know all of you as well! See ya around.

psycofirek