after all this time..

[toucantango]

I'm not technically new to DV - I've been perusing the site and forums for years and finally joined in October, but never posted anything. However, I just noticed my "Lurker" label - certainly an offputting title as far as I'm concerned, and I'm sketched out by enough things and people in this world, I don't need to be sketching myself out too No idea how many posts it takes to get past the lurking phase, but I'm gonna see what I can do. I've been into LDing off and on since May of 2004 when I stumbled upon the concept while chasing down some other Google search. I read a description of someone who dreamt they saw a fishtank full of hand-shaped fish (five fingers and all) and knew that it couldn't be real. I was fascinated and reminded of times during my childhood and growing up when I would realize I was dreaming - usually because I had had the same or a similar dream previously and recognized it - but not realize that I could change or control the dream. I'm sure many people here are familiar with the delight and excitement that comes along with realizing there's a name for this experience, and that you can learn to use it at will and to great dreaming (and waking) advantage Had my first lucid dream in July of '04, about a month after picking up LaBerge's Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming. Since then I've had sporadic periods of diligent dream journal-keeping during which I can have as many as a couple of LDs per week, and if I have one I usually end up having multiple in the same night. I put the whole thing down for a few months after I got a little freaked out by having what can only be described as an OBE (or something damn close) this past July. Now I'm ready to get back into it, so I figured I'd jump in on the forum, since nobody in my real life (waking life, I should say) seems to really "get" it, let alone want to talk about it. Their loss So if you got bored on the way here and skipped to the bottom to find out what the REAL point is of this verbose thread.. there isn't one. Sorry! Just wanted to say hi and introduce myself -Kyla

[NeAvO]

Welcome to the forum! About time you posted All this time and you didn't say hi Well you seem to know your stuff so I'm just going to say hello If you have any questions please feel free to ask me!

[ninja9578]

[toucantango]

Thanks for the welcomes! Is there a legend anywhere on the forum for all of the different abbreviations/acronyms (LD, DJ, MILD, etc) that people use? I find a lot of them intuitive or discernable based on context, but it took me a second reading a post just now to figure out that SP means "sleep paralysis" and FA stands for "false awakening". (In my line of work IRL, we use SP to indicate "state police" and FA for "financial assistance". ) This might be a shot in the dark, but if there were a chart or a list somewhere it would definitely come in handy now and then.

[NeAvO]

Lol, you get "financial assistance" in dreams Yeah there's an acronym list in the Tutorials!

[toucantango]

Excellent - thank you! Lol, you get "financial assistance" in dreams I know, try to keep work and personal life separate right? On the same topic, we use DV as an acronym for "domestic violence"

[NeAvO]

So what job do you currently have? And btw I forgot to say you can change the "Lurker (now member)" title by going into your User CP and the edit profile. User CP is along the blue bar just under your PM section.

[toucantango]

I work for 2-1-1, a hotline/directory number for health and human services information. People call in all kinds of situations for info about agencies/resources available in their area, topics such as affordable housing, substance abuse treatment, crisis intervention, child care, legal services, volunteer opportunities, etc. That's the tried-and-true shortest explanation possible for what we do. I did see in one of the introductory threads that you can change your title.. I guess I'd just rather "earn" a different title by diving in and posting!

[Grod]

Welcome to DV, enjoy your stay.