So I've had four lucid dreams so far. My first two were barely worth mentioning as they both lasted only a few seconds. I had another one later that lasted about a minute or so.

Last night I attempted a WILD, but my mind fell asleep during the attempt and it didn't really work out. I started having some normal dream, and it was a kind of depressing one. The plot of the dream eventually led me to be laying in the dirt on the side of the road in my town (Tucson) next to a fence made out of brick, with a pile of empty liquor bottles surrounding me.

For some reason I suddenly remembered that I had been trying to achieve a lucid dream. At this point the dream became remarkably vivid. So much so, that I couldn't really tell if I was dreaming at all, and I started getting nervous because I heard the voices of some men on the other side of the wall. I was in a really run-down part of town and I thought they might be gangsters. I performed a reality check by trying to push my left index finger through my right hand. It didn't work, which really started to creep me out. Then I plugged my nose and found that I could breath, but I still wasn't convinced it was a dream.

I looked around for a digital clock and noticed one sticking out of a cactus, which I thought was pretty weird. I edged over slowly to avoid the attention of the men on the other side of the fence (it seems kinda silly now) and the numbers were changing randomly. Now I was pretty excited. I rubbed my hands together for a moment and then stood up. The dream was so detailed that I even had to brush the dust off my pants when I stood up.

Then I crossed the street and started walking down a run-down alleyway. On the left was a chain link fence with rusty old metal signs all over it, and a schoolyard on the other side. On the right were a bunch of impoverished houses, packed tightly together. I looked into the sky and saw a cool spaceship thing flying through the air, towards the earth.

At this point I was kind of disappointed that my lucid dream was taking place in such a crappy setting. I thought of something fun to do, but nothing came to mind (I thought of plenty of things after waking up ). Then I thought, well lots of people like to fight in their lucid dreams, so I decided it would be fun to be chased by and fight off ninjas. As soon as I thought of it the ninjas started jumping out from behind buildings. I hopped the fence to the left and ran into the field but more ninjas came from that way and I was already surrounded. They made a circle around me and pointed their swords at me, then stood there waiting for me to do something.

I didn't know what to do, and realized that I don't really know anything about fighting. Then I thought about trying to change the size of my muscles, but as soon as I started doing that the dream faded away. I felt as though I was laying in my bed, and experienced sleep-paralysis type sensations of my body floating through the air.

I didn't want to wake up, so I tried to imagine some sort of dream scene. I pictured a man's face and focused on it, and eventually I woke up in a bed with a doctor sitting next to me. He was congratulating me on having a successful WILD, and then he left the room. I got up and looked at my teeth in the mirror and noticed that one of them was very loose. I could move it around and the feeling was starting to scare me. I didn't want to have to go see the dentist. Then I noticed that all my teeth had little holes in them and was kinda freaking out. I stopped caring about whether or not I was dreaming and thought only that I wanted to wake up. When I woke up for real I was relieved that my teeth were back to normal, but annoyed with myself for throwing the dream away, even though I wasn't lucid for the last part of it.

Overall the experience was more strange than it was fun. It made me realize that even when you're lucid in a dream, your conscious mind isn't working at anywhere near full capacity like it is when you're awake. Now I have a plan for my next lucid dream, so hopefully when it occurs I'll be able to come up with something more interesting to do. It also made me realize that I need to do a RC every time I wake up because I had a false awakening.

By the way, does anyone have any tips for transforming your body within a dream? Whenever I started trying to influence the size and shape of different parts of my body it just caused the dream to change and I eventually lost lucidity. Also, what method do you use to travel to a new area within a lucid dream? That dream I ended up with an extremely boring and even somewhat depressing setting.