Thread: Greetings from arcticfennec.

Hello Dreamviews!

First a bit about myself:
I am an engineering graduate student, but I have had to put my studies on hold because of very significant noise sensitivity and focus issues. I like to compose music, write stories, and sometimes draw pictures. To escape from noise, people, or just plain old atrification, I often go on long walks outside, and sometimes climb trees. Oh, did I mention that I'm crazy about computer programming?

Now a bit about my name:

• I can envision myself as a fennec. I love foxes.
• Fennecs live in north Africa, a warm place.
• My body doesn't do well with cold places. So I like to stay in warm places.
• But in my dreams, the cold places are the best. Even as a child, my dreams mostly focused on icy places.
• So I think an arctic fennec represents me well.

And now for my "dream profile":
I've always had lots of trouble sleeping. I estimate that I get, on average, 6.2 hours of sleep over each 24 hour period. At least I sometimes get some great dreams out of my sleep. Also, I've had a lot of sleep paralysis. The first time it happened (a few years ago) I felt certain I was experiencing internal organ failure! Now it is still frightful, but I accept it and let the fear wash over me.

I can only remember having one possibly lucid dream experience. I fell asleep listening to music, and in my dream continued to hear the music. In my dream I was panickedly trying to figure out where the music was coming from. Eventually I remembered that I had gone to sleep listening to that music, and I realized that I was dreaming. But then I woke up.

Eleven days ago a DreamViews member (DreamForecast) encouraged me to look into lucid dreaming, and directed me to this website. I immediately began lucid dreaming training, mainly focused on WILD since I always wake up throughout the night, and on dream journaling. If nothing else, the dream journaling has really helped me remember my dreams and I hope to get good story ideas out of them.

That first night of lucid dreaming attempt, and most every night since, I've quite readily had a number of "drifting" episodes in which the world around me fades into darkness, and my body starts tingling and spinning in circles. I've had probably around 20 or more "drifts" and the longest one lasted about 60 seconds, but none of them ended in sleep. Even when I was able to completely relax into the "drift" I always returned to being fully awake. So, no successful WILDs yet, but I'll keep trying. FYI, my "drifting" is pretty quiet - no loud ringing noises so far.

Some nights I experience all-out insomnia. After about four hours of sleep, I wake up, and I can then "drift" still, but I can't sleep at all for the rest of the night. (And I usually can't nap in the day time either.)

And some nights I can't drift at all. I can only fall to sleep normally. I think that was mainly during my most depressed, stressed, or excited nights, where I didn't have good focus I guess...

I'm extremely noise sensitive, but I find that, while wearing my earplugs, sometimes some noises (like my roommate closing the bathroom door) actually cause me to start "drifting".

Breathing can be an issue too. Whenever I consciously breathe (like when taking deep breaths to relax) I feel like I'm not getting enough air, I feel a little suffocated. I always try to let my subconscious take back over breathing as soon as possible. Also, when trying to consciously fall asleep, one of the most disturbing things is... breathing in. :/

Though my daydreams seem more distant than dreams, they can be very immersive, and they can get ahead of my thoughts to the point that I never know what will happen next. They can be almost as frightening as nightmares.

Yay dreams!