I've been lurking/inactive for a while (about three years) and figured, now that I'm finally starting to be active I should introduce myself :3

My name's atramentis (it used to be BugGirl but I use that name in too many other places). I've been fascinated by my own dreams for a long time. When I was younger, I felt that the ability to control my dreams would be a better superpower than anything in waking life, but I didn't really think it was possible. I'd had dreams before where I knew I was dreaming, but they tended to be nightmares and my main focus would be on waking up. So when I finally got around to googling it, I was completely flabbergasted that lucid dreaming was real and recognized and had tons of documentation and different methods to try! I didn't really write down my dreams very much then, or if I did I lost the records, but I remember learning to fly by flapping my arms until flying around became a pretty common element of my dreams.

Then three (or more?) years ago I began writing down my dreams, so I can sort of trace the falling-off of lucidity over time. Dream recording grew more intermittent, lucidity less of a focus... occasionally I would gain interest again, but it wouldn't last.

But now my interest has returned, mostly thanks to DreamViews, and I want this time to be different. I'm a little worried that perhaps simply getting older (even though I'm only 20) has been enough to temper both some of my interest and some of my ability... though I'm sure that some of you can assure me that isn't always the case. And I recognize that my lucid dreaming abilities could use some hard work and actual effort put in. I'd like to build it up, like any other skill.

Right now, my ultimate goal is to be lucid every night. I've started to use DreamViews' online dream journal feature, which has already been incredibly helpful. Being part of the community is added motivation for me to make a real effort to write my dreams down, and the tagging abilities are very useful. And it's so great to be part of such a friendly, interesting community, all trying to help each other out... you guys are awesome :3

So, hi everybody!