Hello everyone!

I've been through these boards extensively already, but I figured it was time I joined in on the conversation. I'm not new to lucid dreaming -- in fact, I've done it several times myself. The earliest I can remember is as a kid, realizing I was dreaming and deciding I was going to act however I wanted to act, because in my dreams my mother couldn't punish me. I remember running around the dining room table proclaiming it to everyone who was there that I was dreaming and I could do whatever I wanted! In other dreams, I remember realizing it and not being able to wake myself up when I wanted, so I'd find something to jump off of. That always woke me up.

I was really young when those dreams were frequent.

Now, I don't have as much success doing what I want in my dreams. I've "realized I'm dreaming" so many times I couldn't count, but the unfortunate thing is I wake up within a few seconds each time. It's my fault, because that's what I've come to expect. Last summer, after I realized I was dreaming in a more vivid dream than usual, I woke up and started wondering if there was a way to gain control or to become lucid more often. And that's how I found you guys.

And let me share something very important with the other people posting introductions on this page -- You read so much about keeping a dream journal everywhere online, about it being the foundation, about how important it is for you to start doing that before anything, and I saw firsthand how right everyone is about that. I started keeping an extensive journal last summer, writing everything down on a pad of paper as I woke up and then elaborating into great detail on a private blog soon after. My dream recall increased ten fold and I started becoming lucid almost every night.

After I moved and then eventually got married in the winter, the dream journals stopped and so did the lucid dreaming. I had never fully stabilized a dream, which is obviously my biggest goal at this point. In one dream, I remember turning to the friend I was with and yelling to him, "Now watch what happens!" -- it was a friend with whom I was actually discussing my lucid dreams with, and my conscious mind was telling my subconscious dream character to watch, haha.

But, I'm here to learn more and to try harder. I lost track of time so I'm going to cut this short now. I'll be seeing you guys around, look forward to the conversation!

Oh, my name is Michael.