The return of the prodigal son

[oooooo]

Hello!!! I used to be a registered lurker here around 3-4 years ago. My lucid dreaming came to a halt fairly soon after I stopped coming here. Last week I was talking with a friend about dreaming and then we got into talking about lucid dreaming and I figured - why not start again. My dream recall is awful, I have problems falling asleep and having to get up early enough to get to work at 8:00 I don't really have the luxury of just laying in bed late and trying to remember dreams, but hopefully I'll be able to work things out. I don't really think I'm the kinda person to work these hours, my sleep cycle is just so different.. I'm trying to just start fresh with dreaming again basically. I'm a finnish 20 year old guy (finally I can buy my whiskey myself...mmmmmm.....whisskey), I like music and I make music. I play the saxophone, the guitar, some keyboards and some bass and I'm saving money to get a djembe and random percussion instruments like shakers and such. The music I make is mostly electronic music but there's some stuff I write and record with just an acoustic guitar, kind of pseudo-klezmer stuff with a hint of blues, and I compose classical pieces that I will never let anyone hear Overall I have an interest in lots of music but right now my main focus is on ethnic, percussion centered (african, native american) shamanic and tribal music and electronic music like ambient and psychill and similar, calm stuff. (The tunes on my virb page are quite old and I'm not that fond of them anymore (kesa and tired dub are my favorites out of those), new stuff will be uploaded as soon as I buy a license to the software (the demo versions restrictions include not being able to write it to an audio file)) I also paint and draw a lot, but having moved to a new place and living by myself for the first time I haven't really found my "creative rhythm" yet, and like with my music, it's more just dabbling around with things that I'm not that good at, just for my own recreation I read a bit, but I never get around to actually reading anything! My favorite literature is Joyce's Ulysses, The Divine Comedy, pretty much anything John Milton, Nietzsche or Dostoevsky, ancient asian philosophy (Laoze ) and cookbooks. I'm also a bit of a moviefreak, weird, artsy movies and dramas are my cup of tea: David Lynch, Andrei Tarkovsky, Akira Kurosawa, Darren Aronofsky, Sergio Leone, Takashi Miike, Chan-wook Park... just a handful of the dozens and dozens of directors that I practically worship. So uhh, hey everyone EDIT: Oh yeah I forgot to mention, quite often, especially when I'm feeling creative with painting and drawing I do this, meditation/sleep thing, I think they call it a hypnagogic state, where I can let my creativity just flow and make sketches in my head and then just open my eyes and start drawing and painting and when I have a creativity block with a work I do it again. That's about as close to lucid dreaming that I've been in the past few years. I do this with music too but music is more difficult. But all of my art has (to me) a very dreamy edge to it, like dreams that I never had... (I really just don't remember my dreams at all.. ranging from maybe 0-5 per 1-3 months...) PS. Does anyone know what kind of an effect melatonin might have on dream recall? Negative? Positive? I have a prescription for some melatonin based "sleeping pills", I'm not absolutely sure if they're helping me or not yet, but it sure as hell is making me tired at the right time (when it's time to go to bed), but also in the morning and during the day. And like I said, my dream recall is awful no matter how well I feel I've slept.