Hello everyone,

After lurking on and off on this forum for years, I've finally decided to create an account. As a child I had many "accidental" lucid dreams and a very good recall, and around my mid teens I started losing said ability so I did the research, which led me to this wonderful resource! During that time I practiced sporadically several techniques, and despite the low persistence and effort invested in it, the results were very good. I eventually got to the level of being able to visualize a scene and just fall asleep into it remaining lucid (what I call VILD). In fact, my first sleep paralysis happened as I woke up from a successful VILD that turned into a nightmare - which I did at the start of my sleep (without WBTB). Since then I lost interest, but that changed during last year's winter, since now that I'm in my early twenties my recall decreased dramatically, and the monthly lucid dream number is at about 1/2. I thus returned to this forum to lurk around, but due to other circumstances had to stop the practice again.

This year I'm going to try again, and I've been very gradually improving during the last month. Tonight I had quite an experience which tipped me over the registration edge, since I'm not exactly sure how to avoid it next time. I'll make a DJ entry about it later today... Btw, I don't keep a physical DJ, rather I record my dreams with the recorder app on my phone, which works better for my kind of memory. Currently I'm focusing on recall, awareness, and readjusting to how to pull off a WILD (chained, finger, paralysis, or regular - depending on the time available at night).

A little about me outside of the dream world - I'm a physics student and the various disciplines of science are my biggest hobby (although somehow it's harder to enjoy physics as much, now that I have to). Other hobbies include gardening and collecting a specific group of plants, physical exercise, and edm "production" / drawing - though the artistic side of me is on hold for some time now. English is my third language - so I apologize in advance for any typos, etc.

Also, just wanted to thank dreamviews for collectively making such a great and diverse resource available to anyone!