I've been lurking in this forum for a few days, but this the first time I've had a topic of my own, so incase you haven's seen me around—I was likely trying to steal other people's thunder or giving advice about things I'm no good at—hi!

My name is Matt, I go by M@ when syntax will allow, but you can call me anything you wish. I mean it, anything, feel free to be creative.

A few months ago I stumbled on a podcast about lucid dreaming, I started a dream journal and after a measly 2 weeks stopped writing in it. Over those 2 weeks I got a whopping 4 dreams down (though I probably actually remembered 6 or so, but found myself too lazy to write). After having a rather stimulating conversation about it with a co-worker about the topic I bought a new journal (the old one had become home to some math notes), and some books:The first two of these start with a few words on dream recall, but the body of the books are about lucid dream induction, control, etc...

The latter, which is twice or more as long, starts with an introduction to the buddhist spirituality regarding dreams, I've thumbed ahead to find things that will probably be useful for aiding dream recall but it is apparent that the book wasn't meant to be used as a quick refrence.

Every night, or before naps, I'll flip my dream journal to the appropriate page (the first one for now) date the entry, and go to sleep trying to keep telling myself that I will wake from and remember each dream that I have. I find that it is very hard to keep focused on this goal, my mind gets away from me and I start running a list of the bills that need paying or which classes I have tomorrow. I think that my dream-self is ADD.
  • If I am lucky enough to be woken by the sun (which I find to be much more pleasant than any alarm) or on my own I can usually remember a feeling and maybe a topic.
  • If my cd alarm clock wakes me (this is most of the time) I always have it set to something that picks up gradually, Tool - 10000 days (wings pt 2) is this week's wake-up song, but I always end up with lyrics in my head instead of my dreams.
  • If the actual alarm wakes me up I leap out of bed to shut it off, that sound is the most annoying in the world, and any remnants of dreams are long gone by then.
Because of this my longest entry all week looks like this:
"I think I was helping someone with something, I also remember that an old lady was around, but I don't have a mental picture of her."

I think/hope that practicing some of the meditation found in the last book that I mentioned, as well as on a web site about the same topic, might help calm the perpetual chatter that distracts me (avoiding caffeine helps too), both from affirming my desire to remember my dreams and during my first/only WILD attempt. I also plan to use something non-lyrical to wake up to (Linkin Park - Session, maybe) though if I can give myself enough time to wake before the alarm I'll do that. Even in the perfect sun-inspired well-rested mornings I rarely remember that I want to work on my dreams until a few minutes after I've woken up.

Now that you know my situation (sorry for the length, but it seems that undetailed questions usually get undetailed answers) I was hoping for any ideas you might have. Things I should add/change/remove from my routine. Specifically I want to work on remembering to remember, both before bed and in the morning, but any info would be awesome.
Thanks!

note: I don't actually expect everyone to go check out the links on this topic, but whenever I have a problem I usually look for posts like this one for answers. Hopefully some of my reserch will be helpful for another lost noob like myself.