Hello all.
I first heard about lucid dreaming in an article in Reader's Digest, and I thought it would be kind of cool. I came to this site and read all of the material on the first page. I was excited about what would be possible with lucid dreaming, and I immediatley began reality checks several times an hour that day.

Just reading about the lucid dreaming caused me to have a lucid dream that very night. As hoped, my reality checking habit carried over into the dream, and it triggered a lucid dream (albiet a very mild one with very little control.)

Basically I dreamed that I was at a vending machine, and I pressed one of the buttons and it said "USE EXACT CHANGE". And then, randomly, a giant crab fell out of the ceilng on top of me and began attacking me. Screaming, and throwing the hideous beast off of me, I backed up and began to....float.

"...float?" I asked myself. And then I realized, "I must be dreaming." At that moment I became very excited, and my heart began to race. The giant crab promptly exploded.

And then I had a false awakening. Dissapointed and discouraged, I thought I had lost the lucid dream, and I got out of bed. I had lost lucidity, and it didn't even dawn on me that my legs were purple and that everything in my room was floating around as if it had no gravity.

I decided to do a reality check, and I looked at the clock.. "7:42", it read. I flipped the lightswitch on and off and it worked perfectley. I looked at the clock again...7:42. But then, I thought, "wait a minute...are my legs supposed to be purple?" And the feeling of lucidity returned again.

This time I didn't want to be too excited to remain in the dream, so I tried to remain calm. The words of this website repeated in my mind. "Indeed, the dream world seems very much like the real world."

I kicked a cardboard box with my purple foot and sent it flying through the air in zero gravity. I realized that I lacked a sense of touch. Deciding to change the drab scenery of my bedroom into something more interesting.

So, I imagined a completley white room of infinite size filled with random abstract 3d sculptures. I wasn't quite sure how to change the scenery, but my subconscious provided me with some way to do it. A computer screen appeared immediatley before my face, and a DOS prompt read on it: "ENTER DESTINATION====> " So, I tried to type a description of my ideal landscape into the DOS prompt, but I got confused. All of the letters began rearranging themselves, and the world began to fade.

I tried spinning, and holding the image of the white plain with random abstract shapes, but when I had stopped spinning all that remained was blackness...and I lost lucidity and enetered a horrifying nightmare, (the details of which I care not to share).

After I had had the dream I wrote it all down in a journal.

I've been trying to have another lucid dream for the past week...but all of my reality checks are foiled somehow. I feel like my dreams are becoming more real to compensate for my new advances.

For instance, in one of my dreams I did a reality check by looking in a mirror. My face looked normal, and undistorted, so I continued with the dream, thinking it was real. In another dream I was climbing a horrifying rusty ladder on a disgusting sewer tank. Thinking about how strange this was, I smelled the air, to see if I was in reality. As expected, the air had the smell of sewage, so I continued with my dream and didn't question if it was real.

How do I continue on, when all of my attempts at reality checks are screwed? Should I pick up a new habit for my reality checks, like pinching myself? Also, how do I remain calm after ataining lucidity? Twice I found out that I was having a dream and then an instant later woke up out of excitement.