Arggh, I'm so annoyed!

[pixiedust]

After not much sleep last night, I slept quite a bit this evening. Towards the end of my sleep, I was having random dreams when I started to become lucid. It was a slow process though - first I had a kind of scary dream, and remembered my trick from childhoood, that if I'm having a frightening dream, if I shake my head back and forth really hard in the dream, it'll wake me up. I did this, but instead of waking up, went into another dream. Some random stuff happened, and then I was in a bar with some people, sort of half-aware I was dreaming, when I decided "You know what? I don't want to be here. I want to go ride a horse!". I took a running leap at the window, thinking I'd break it, but right before I hit it, I thought "but this is a dream, I can go right through it" - and I did Woohoo... my first time passing through a solid object. Then I was outside, and it was beautiful. I was flying over a mountainside, there were huge gray and black rocks on a cliff face, and the sky was gray and there was low fog hanging over the land in places... The air was cool, and it felt very real. There was no where to ride though, so I scanned the scenery for some flat ground (proof I guess that I still wasn't 100% lucid, cos I didn't think of just "making" some flat land, or telling myself it would be there). Anyway, I kept flying and soon a sandy beach came into view. It was still a bit foggy with gray sky, but it was just lovely, and as I cruised in to land I saw some horses up the beach a bit - a few brown ones trotting in the surf, a few over by some bushes at the edge of the beach, some seagulls, and a few people. I glided gently to the ground and landed. The horses were up the beach, and I began calling to them, and then- "beepbeep.... beepbeep.....beepbeep....beepbeep" MY WATCH ALARM STARTED TO GO OFF! ARGH! I lost scenery as if someone closed a black shutter on it. The alarm only goes off for a few seconds so I tried hard to stay in the dream, but next thing I knew, I felt my body in my bed, and I was awake. I am SO annoyed. The ironic thing is that it's set to go off a few times a day to make me....do reality checks if I've forgotten It went off at 11pm, a time I am almost always awake... but not tonight. I've shut off the alarm now. I'm wide awake at the moment, but when I go back to sleep later tonight I'm going to try to get back to the dream. Geez, that was annoying.

[AspirationRealized]

I suggest skeptic reality checking in stead of random reality checking. What I mean is, look around in the real world very carefully for your dream signs, or anything that seems out of the ordinary. If something like that occurs, do your reality check, and actually question which state you're in. The idea is that you will reality check reliable when you notice something odd in a dream. Otherwise, if you do the "reality check fifty times a day" thing, it'll be a fluke when you check inside of a dream. And if you do a "reality check every time my watch goes off" thing... well, you'll leave a beautiful lucid dream in the most annoyingly ironic ways imaginable xP NOTE These are just ideas I've read from others, which make sense to me. I have yet to have a Lucid dream, as I am a beginner, but this makes the most sense to me.

[pixiedust]

I suggest skeptic reality checking in stead of random reality checking. What I mean is, look around in the real world very carefully for your dream signs, or anything that seems out of the ordinary. If something like that occurs, do your reality check, and actually question which state you're in. The idea is that you will reality check reliable when you notice something odd in a dream. Otherwise, if you do the "reality check fifty times a day" thing, it'll be a fluke when you check inside of a dream. And if you do a "reality check every time my watch goes off" thing... well, you'll leave a beautiful lucid dream in the most annoyingly ironic ways imaginable xP NOTE These are just ideas I've read from others, which make sense to me. I have yet to have a Lucid dream, as I am a beginner, but this makes the most sense to me. I actually don't do the "reality check fifty times a day thing", and I don't see why it would be a "fluke" if I checked it inside a dream. My reality check is plugging my nose (and occasionally looking at my watch), and so far I've reality checked by plugging my nose twice, and gotten lucid dreams out of it twice. My watch alarm is set to go off three times a day, which I don't think is overly much, and I often reality check without it - I don't rely on it. But I like to have the alarm there to remind me if I've had a particularly busy day or have a lot on my mind, that oh yeah, I should be doing reality checks. I just happened to take a nap at a time when I rarely take naps... and was woken up by it. I posted this thread more out of amused annoyance than anything else - that and excitement at having gone lucid, even though it didn't last very long. I'll try again tonight. PS - The "look around for anything strange" thing doesn't really work for me - I've tried it, and I can never remember to constantly be "looking out for anything odd or out of the ordinary". I remember for a little bit, and then forget...whereas I usually remember to do RCs, and when I don't, my watch alarm reminds me.