Hello everyone! I'm Ash, 27 year old from Seattle but currently living in Alabama

I've been interested in dreams, both the scientific side and the metaphysical side, for as long as I can remember. I always find myself searching for information regarding something that happened to me, and I noticed 99% of the time I wind up on this site from any Google search I do, so I figured I might as well finally sign up

When I was younger I had something called Delayed sleep-phase syndrome which made me a chronic night owl. But because I was in school I had to try to force myself asleep at night, which rarely worked. So the only sleep I got was napping at school and the few hours I could get in afterwards before my body started waking me up. I started having bouts of sleep paralysis on a regular basis, sometimes twice a night, and had no idea what they were at the time. For the longest time I thought I was getting abducted every night... eventually I found out what SP was and became more interested in using it to have lucid dreams. (I still have a phobia of grey aliens though )

When I got into college, my DSPS got worse and I wound up with Non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder, which, if you've never heard of it, is a hellish thing that keeps me from working jobs with regular hours (I currently work freelance from home). I was in and out of sleep clinics regularly and nothing's worked, so I'm just stuck with it for now.

So sleep and its problems have been a central theme throughout my life, and for me working towards lucid dreams has been a great way for me to cope with it. I'm decent with dream recall now, and can usually remember at least two dreams in detail per night and fuzzy bits of a few more. Hopefully being here on a forum will give me the motivation to get to the point where I can remember all of them