Hey guys, been a good while since I last logged in on here. As some may know, when it comes to lucid dreaming, I tend to have a rise and fall with my practices. I'll build up recall, start recalling lots of dreams in vivid detail, and quickly reach the point where I'm having a lucid through simple DILDing. Then, usually around this point, I just stop doing it, for no reason I can fathom other than loss of motivation. It almost always happens without fail. This latest time, however, went about differently.
You see, my life's undergone some big changes this past year, and I ended up losing somebody very important to me, on account of something I did. This affected me badly both mentally and physically. I began showing some signs of depression, and grew extremely unhappy, and fell perpetually in that state for most of the year to this point. I'm sort of coming out of it now, but it's not easy. Needless to say, this affected both my sleep and my dreams. I began to sleep a lot more than I used to do, going to bed at the same general time, but sleeping in later and later, and even taking naps, which I never used to be able to do. My recall, conversely, has been dead flat for all this time. Every couple of weeks or so I'd have a dream that was very vivid or impacted me emotionally, and those, I would remember in pretty good detail. But aside from those, I've had next to no recall, and I've been out of practice for a long time.
I've realized lately that maybe I can get at this again and, if I don't lose my motivation again like I typically do, I could use lucid dreaming to overcome these issues, become happier. So that's my goal, and it's what I'll attempt to do. I've thought up some ways to keep myself motivated, and I do hope those stick, but if anybody has any suggestions, that would be excellent too. I know this probably isn't the first thread of its kind, but I felt like sharing it, and this section seemed best fit for it. The last time I was practicing this, I had managed two lucids in one week, which is the most I've ever gotten before. I was even showing better dream control within those lucids.
I don't know if mood or things like depression can affect lucid practices in any way, or if they can affect dreams themselves, but if anybody has any insight into that, it'd be interesting to hear about. Anyways, this is how I've been, and here's hoping to plenty lucids to come. Thanks for reading. ^^