Thread: A hello and a question

Hey all, I'm glad to be finally posting on the Dreamviews forums. I've lurked the website and forum for a couple of years now, reading experiences and tutorials. I'm pretty dream-obsessed, but it sounds like I'm in good company here.

I've been dream-journaling since 2005, off and on; in fact, I want to say it was Dreamviews that inspired me in the first place, because I started with the intention of having a lucid dream. Unfortunately, I've never had a lucid dream, but I've had some absolutely incredible experiences, including an episode of sleep paralysis (very frightening!), epic and recurring dreams, vivid control, and just the other day I had a great false awakening.

Anyway, this brings me to my question. When I started journaling in 2005, almost right from the start I was able to exert control over my dreams. *I should mention this was random control... Sometimes I was able to decide when to control and when not to, but it was more along the lines of, "here's an opportunity to control the dream". All I needed was a good foundation of recall and I could have multiple instances of such control in a week. Before the New Year, I decided to start journaling seriously again, because I miss having vivid dreams, control, etc... I've been keeping it every day, even when I don't have dreams. My recall is okay, not the best because of college... But as I mentioned before, I had the false awakening, so I thought things were fine. But I can't help feeling like "nothing is happening." My unconscious doesn't seem to want to cooperate with me.

I guess I'm wondering is, what can I do to move myself towards dream-control, and then onwards to a lucid dream? I can't seem to figure out the next step... I've got journaling down, I know about recall and such... just need to take it further.

Thanks for the feedback, and sorry for the long post.
-Afterdreams