Hey there. My name is TJ. I'm 21 years old and have been having some odd experiences with lucid dreaming recently. Here's a little about the history of my dreaming:

I've always had lucid dreams, although they were really rare. I'd say 1 every few months(the ones I could remember anyway). However, recently I've been having very short and frequent lucid dreams. A few a week actually. I became interested in why the sudden rise in the frequency of them and I'm going to do a little self searching to figure out the answer. However, even though I am having frequent lucid dreams, they are very, very short. It seems like every time I realize I'm dreaming, everything becomes very vivid and real-like and then all of a sudden fades to all black and the dreams ends or I wake up(or have a false awakening). I'm looking to learn how to stop this fading(spinning and such doesn't work for me) and prolong the dreams.

Just a little extra information about myself:
I do not keep a dream journal. I never felt the need to, because I can recall a good many of my dreams by just thinking about what I dreamt the night before and usually if I can't remember, something throughout the day will remind me.
I do suffer from sleep paralysis. This usually happens early in the morning and it only lasts a minute or so. They were actually quite terrifying in the beginning(visuals, sounds, etc.), however I've gotten use to them, so I just ride them at this point.
False awakenings. This is by far one of the biggest issues I've come across in my dreaming endeavors. They seem to follow in a pattern as well. I will realize that I am lucid dreaming, dream will fade, I will have a false awakening, still realize I'm dreaming, and the cycle just repeats. I've just programmed myself to do a reality check when I first wake up in the morning by looking at my hand and trying to reform/melt it. So this is another obstacle I have to move towards overcoming.
Well, anyway, that's my story and it's great to be here and I hope to move forward with my experiences with help from ya'll. It's good to meet you all.