The obligatory hello thread.

[Soong]

Hello all, I’m popping in here to post my obligatory “OMG!Hi2U!!! I m A newB” thread. A little background on my self to start I suppose… My name is Andrew, I’m 23. I currently live in (what I now see as an open sore upon the world) the city of Palm Springs located in California in the United States of America. I have been here for about a month and a half. I originally grew up and spent the first 22.9 years of my life in the San Francisco bay area, mostly the East Bay. I lived in a wonderful little city called Lafayette for the last 10 of those years. I lost my job do to an act of gross stupidity and arrogance on my part that I thought I could get away with; I did not. I moved to Palm Springs because I had a life long friend who moved down here about the same time I moved to Lafayette. He offered me a place to live rent free and a friend of his offered me a job with great pay, doing computer repair. The house I’m living in is indeed rent free but the paint is literally bubbling and pealing off the walls because of the mold growing under it, There is not hot water because the pipe coming off the water heater burst somewhere under the house and there is no crawls space to access it. The floor will have to be ripped out at some point. The job didn’t really fall through but Bill (my alleged employer) does not have enough work to give me full time work as he though he would. Palm Springs is basically a retirement destination much like the state of Florida; this means everything closes by about 8pm. Palm Springs also has the densest population of homosexual men per capita in any city in the US from what I’m told. I haven’t seen this in writing so far as I can remember but I’ve gotten more whistles and cat calls from cars full of men in the last month than in the whole of my previous experiences in life. Not that I have any problem with homosexuality or anything, my dad is gay and I lived with him for 8 years; it just gets old fast. I have an appreciation for what women go through with the stares and cat calls at least. In terms of dream experience… From what I can recall I’ve always had very vivid dreams. They’re always in color and are quite often highly abstract. When I say abstract I mean really very much ‘out there’. To give an example I’ll use my earliest dream that I can remember. It was at some point in elementary school. I was playing in my backyard with some friends. There was also a baseball stadium behind my house (in the dream). We were playing in wetsuits that ocean divers wear and we were floating and flying around in bubbles. More recently I had a dream where I seemed to be able to perceive time in a very non-linear way. Not only able to travel back and fourth in my own life time (think Quantum Leap the TV series), but able to see how each decision I would make would impact all future events simultaneously. I was being chased through a hall way and down a stairwell. I could see how differently the chase would evolve if I jumped down the stairs, or if I leaped over the banister to the level below, of if I ran through door or around the other corner; all of this happening simultaneously. It was very strange indeed. I’ve had nightmares that were absolutely strange. In one there was this cave like tunnel going down into the earth that was so wide the sides were nearly lost in atmospheric haze. Going down this tunnel into the bowls of the earth (or hell?) was a massive conveyer belt upon witch I saw this large whale being tortured for lack of a better word. Large spinning wheels with spikes of all sizes would grind it skin off as it passed on this belt. Blades would cut it; rip the flesh from its bones. All highly disturbing images. In terms of lucid dreams I’ve had only maybe a half dozen or less in my life that I can remember. Usually I wake from the excitement of the realization that I’m dreaming. In the first lucid dream I can remember having, where I actually had control; I was very young and had just watched the movie Hook. As I was dreaming I was being chased through my back yard by Captain Hook. I was cornered against a fence. There was a gate but I was not tall enough to reach the latch. As Captain Hook approached I was scared but then I realized ‘this is impossible’ and that I was dreaming. I then simply took to flying away. I was excited by flying away, over my house, looking down at a very angry Captain Hook and then I woke up. I found the Dream Views website a long time ago, maybe as much as a year. I read a couple of the articles and bookmarked the page. I never revisited it until a few days ago when I had a lucid dream. I asked a girl for her phone number and as she tried to write it for me (this was, incredibly, not the part that I thought was impossible and thus brought about lucidity) she could not form the characters with the pen. The fact she couldn’t write her number even though she was trying is what triggered the realization that I was dreaming. I once heard that in a dream you can’t really read, that numbers and letters change and are scrambled. I somehow remembered this within my dream and took control. I of course got all excited and woke up a minute later. Fiddlesticks. Anyway, I came here with a renewed interest in dreaming in general and hope to gain insight in all things dream related. I’ve filled out my user profile and have posted my first dream journal (though it is slightly R rated I kept it clinical). -Soong

[Tsen]

You definitely seem like an un-n00bish newb. Welcome to the forum! The dream recall issues you're having are pretty easy to solve if you want to put the effort into it. For one, try writing in a Dream Journal next to your bed before getting up and walking around in the morning. Usually you have better recall before you get up and walk around, so it should help. Also, if that doesn't help, a tried and true method is to wake up after four or five hours of sleep and write down any dreams you remember in your DJ before going back to sleep. It interrupts the REM phase of sleep, so it should help you remember more. Anyway, there's no true cure for waking up after becoming lucid, just try not to get excited. It isn't easy, but I don't really know of any ways around it. -Tsen

[nesgirl119]

Welcome to the Forum! Like Tsen said, try keeping a DJ. When you become Lucid in a Dream, just try to settle down a little, or you could try WILD.

[Soong]

Originally posted by Tsen+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Tsen)</div> You definitely seem like an un-n00bish newb. * * Welcome to the forum![/b] Thanks! Originally posted by Tsen@ The dream recall issues you're having are pretty easy to solve if you want to put the effort into it. *For one, try writing in a Dream Journal next to your bed before getting up and walking around in the morning. *Usually you have better recall before you get up and walk around, so it should help. *Also, if that doesn't help, a tried and true method is to wake up after four or five hours of sleep and write down any dreams you remember in your DJ before going back to sleep. *It interrupts the REM phase of sleep, so it should help you remember more. * Anyway, there's no true cure for waking up after becoming lucid, just try not to get excited. *It isn't easy, but I don't really know of any ways around it. -Tsen I have recently started keeping a pad of paper near my bed so I can write down what I can when I wake up. Later, when time permits, I put a detailed version in my Dream Views dream journal. <!--QuoteBegin-nesgirl119 Welcome to the Forum! * Like Tsen said, try keeping a DJ. When you become Lucid in a Dream, just try to settle down a little, or you could try WILD. I have tried something similar to a WILD; without the L. On occasion when I wake up from a really cool dream that I want to get back to I will try to remain as still and relaxed as possible with my eyes closed and focus on the dream I was just having in an effort to pick up where I left off. Also, I meant to make the title of this thread "The obligatory hello thread."