Mortal Mist

[Week 1...]

Dunno if anyone else does something like this in their journal, but in this reply here I will be detailing the progress of being serious about Lucid dreaming and my sleep habits for one week. EDIT: Extended to two weeks because of a lack of results.

As a general guideline, I'll be following a schedule I lifted from one of BillyBob's tutorials. As the days of the week go by, I'll write down my experiences that night, good or bad.

Week 1...

-Sunday, May 11th (WBTB)
All conditions were perfect.

I had just finished posting my "For Lucid Virgins" thread in Seekers Corner, and even commented that things like these threads would usually trigger lucidity simply because of the confidence they gave to people. One person would become lucid after responding there, and then another and another until responding there became instant lucid success (as I had seen in other threads elsewhere). The idea was that I'd have my first lucid too and start the tradition here.

My physical dream journal was disorganized and used for other purposes, so I fixed it up and removed anything that wasn't related to dreaming. I even wrote "dream is destiny" in the subject line (its a red comp book), like I had always meant to.

Most importantly, I was ready to sleep on time. It was around 11:30 when I was actually in my bed, which would make my WBTB time 4:30 (five hours later) and my wake up time 7:30 (eight hours later). I had both times set in my alarm clock.

Best of all, I was feeling very positive about the whole thing, since all of the conditions were right. I dream rehearsed for a few minutes, thinking of what I was going to do in my lucid dream tonight (not "in the event of", or "if I had one." I was going to do this, because it was inevitable I would be lucid). I then cleared my head, and let myself fall to sleep.

But it didn't happen. I tried clearing my head, and even letting it race about on its own... and I remained aware. Awake. I became uncomfortable, which only happens when I'm restless, and tossed and turned. When I checked the clock, another hour had gone by. Another half hour. Another hour. I adjusted my alarms to offset the time I lost.

I was becoming extremely frustrated. Soon, my WBTB alarm would swallow up the usual time I wake up in the morning, rendering the technique useless. And when it was around 2:45 (more than three hours now of not being able to sleep), I was furious. I smacked my alarm clock against the wall and threw my comp book as well, getting out of bed and into the hallway.

I took a shower, which I sometimes do to calm down. I let the water run hot enough so I could feel a slight burn, and waited for me to center again. At some point in the three hours, I had resolved to take a break from practicing lucid dreaming, so as not to become frustrated again... but as I calmed, I decided that I wouldn't be restless every night, and that this was probably just because past 2 AM is when I had been going to sleep lately and 11:30 was too drastic a change too soon.

In the morning, I woke up several times. Before I had knocked my alarm clock off of the table by my bed, I had turned its alarms off, so I woke up naturally to the stir of my family in the morning. I had a very foggy recollection of a dream, but I ended up killing it by going back to sleep, as I didn't feel it was important enough to go find my dream journal (wherever it was now) and document it.

So there's the first night on schedule. Tomorrow night is another WBTB night, we'll see how it goes.

-Monday, May 12th (WBTB)
Better luck sleeping this time.

I went to bed around 12:45, picking up my alarm clock and my dream journal comp book from the ground. I set my first alarm five hours later and my second alarm eight hours later, like last time. Dream rehearsed as I did last time, but fell asleep easier (I was tired from missing a few hours the previous night).

When the alarm went off, I woke up, almost immediately remembering why I was waking up so soon. However, I had no recollection of any dreams. I sat up, looking around at my room critically, coming up with as many things to reality check on as possible. I treated it as a false awakening, and actually checked as if I was convinced I was dreaming.

I left my room for a bit, continuing to keep my mind on lucid dreaming. When I returned, I sat up another five minutes, making my time awake fifteen minutes total. I reminded myself what I was going to do when I hit lucidity a few minutes from now, laid down, and fell asleep quickly.

I woke up with nothing. No dreams, not even non lucids. I feel that I'm going to have to vary my timing and find out by trial and error what my best target time for a WBTB is, but I will try the standard five hours a few more times before setting out to do it. Tomorrow is one more WBTB, maybe I'll do better this time.

My question is, is it possible to think of lucid dreaming too much? In these WBTB, even before waking up I am dead set on lucid dreaming. Tonight I will try a more relaxed approach, focusing intently only after I wake up.

-Tuesday, May 13th (WBTB...?)
Due to my waking up time being shifted, it made it near impossible to do a WBTB successfully.

I turned off my alarm, but surprisingly woke up just fifteen minutes short of what my target time would've been. Somehow I remembered to do a FILD (part of Billybob's schedule is that you attempt a FILD ANYTIME you wake up in the middle of the night without stimulus). It was maybe the second time I've tried it, I sent the impulse to my fingers to wiggle, without actually wiggling them. Nothing happened after a while and I gave up, going back to sleep.

Good news is this approach (fuh-get-about-it) was more relaxed. I would call this night actually a DILD... but a failed one. No lucidity, and no recollection of any dreams at all.

A resounding failure -echoes-

Tomorrow is a scheduled DILD. Maybe the simplest of techs will work, and I will try not to focus so intently that it stresses me out.

-Wednesday, May 14th (DILD)
Die, pj?

I have a vague fragment of being inside of a video game, where people could make vehicles like motorcycles appear and vanish under them, and we all had weapons. Thats not the weird thing... one of my opponents was pj >.> and I shot a rocket launcher at him.

This of course, was a non lucid, and was too fragmented to be considered a complete dream in my upcoming Workbook entry. So no lucidity. I woke up by my alarm, got nothing, and went back to sleep a bit more. Then I woke up again with this fragment.

This marks the most progress thus far, but its still not very satisfying. I wonder if anyone else has shot a rocket launcher at pj while chasing him in a motorcycle, in their dreams?

-Thursday, May 15th (WILD)
If only REM cycles were constant...

I went to sleep WAY too late for this, and I knew it. Between talking to a few people about dreaming subjects and inviting a few people over this way, I lost track of time. It was 1 AM or past it when I finally got to bed, meaning my target time for the WILD would be 6 AM. I took a few minutes to practice focus on my breathing and nothing else before going to sleep, and I achieved some pretty good results. I became lost in my breathing, and I could feel my body growing heavier... or not as much heavier as having less feeling. Like not having skin... whenever I realized this and the thought came to mind, I'd grow more sensitive. But I could still revert back to that point pretty easily. I decided that was good enough practice and hoped for the best conditions when I awoke.

I woke up naturally, before my alarm clock. Bad habits are coming back to haunt me it seems... I'm waking up after four or five hours of sleep, which is what I used to get regularly because of my bad sleeping schedule. It was creeping close to my target time anyway, so I turned that alarm off and sat up. My sleep hadn't been very sound, so I wasn't as drowsy as I'd have liked... I laid almost immediately and began to focus on my breathing.

Pretty much every distraction that was possible began to bother me. Morning light was coming through the blinds, my dad had left the TV on in the living room way too loud, bird were chirping outside my window, I was feeling pains in my back from sleeping wrong, and I felt hunger pangs... which I almost never feel. I attempted to keep focus, but between all of this it was near impossible and I've yet to gather the proper equipment (ear plugs, blindfold) to render these distractions useless. After just a few minutes of trying I went back to sleep, waking up with recollection so vague the only thing I could remember was that I had dreamt of something, but I had no clue at all what it was.

This is disappointing because I've always felt closest to WILDs after my first attempt brought some surprising results (for me, anyway). I also realize that doing this at 6 AM isn't the best time unless you have something to block out all the distractions, so this is largely my fault.

Two more days, and one of them's another WILD. Better luck next time?

-Friday, May 16th (DILD)
Another day, another failure.

Went to bed relatively early, woke up exactly eight hours later with no recollection. Dream rehearsal before bed? Check. Reality checking appropriately all day(and all week?)? Check. Keeping my mind on Lucid Dreaming constantly? Check.

One more chance.

-Saturday, May 17th (WILD...?)
Because of some family stuff late at night, I was up too late to attempt a WILD. I counted this as a DILD night, so I'll do an extra WILD next week.

I'm extending this to three weeks, since results have been humiliatingly bad. It'll also give me a chance to experiment with different WBTB times.

Week 2...

-Sunday, May 18th (WBTB)
Alarm hijinks...

I thought I had set the alarm for four and a half hours after sleeping (instead of the typical five of past attempts) but apparently in my sleepiness I had set the morning time to wake me up instead. So this is a failure. I'll try four and a half hours again... but I did get a fragmented dream out of it...

Guess its better than more 0's in my workbook...

-Monday, May 19th (WBTB)
Ah, the consequences for mistakes...

I can see now that my sleeping habits before this switch are behind a lot of the chaos. My body hasn't gotten used to the new pace, and I end up waking up four or five hours after sleeping regardless of alarm - because this is how much sleep I'd usually get. Afterwards, I am very restless, and irritated at it. I end up losing too much sleep for my target times, or my target times become so late because of my lack of sleep, that its becomes impossible to do the technique.

No results whatsoever. None.

-Tuesday, May 20th (WBTB)
Nothing.

-Wednesday, May 21st (WILD)
First dream of any sort since I started Determination.

I woke up five hours after sleeping for my WILD, only sitting up for a few moments, enough to RC a few times and make sure it wasn't a false awakening. This is because when I wake up I gain alertness much more quickly than most do, apparently, and the trick to WILDing is to fall asleep afterall. I needed to be as groggy as possible, but even now, sleep wasn't swallowing me up at all.

I had no conclusive results, but I did make more progress. There are several external distractions no matter what the conditions at my house. I like to keep my fan running but it creates an awkward and unsequential noise. Usually there will be birds chirping right outside my window, and every other manner of distraction. Tonight, however, I was more successful than ever at blocking these out. Internal distractions abound as well... hunger pangs, and just the sensation of my body. I had success losing this as well. The trick right now is to use my breathing as an anchor, without gripping it for dear life. I can best describe it as the ideal being on a chain hooked to the anchor, floating far enough away from it to be a separate entity but a distance comfortable enough for me to observe it, and most importantly, still keeped tied to it.

After about an hour of several attempts, I turned in and decided to try to have a dream... which I did, and its my newest addition to this thread.

By the way, if anyone else is reading this, could you let me know? I always wonder if my babbling is ever read.

-Thursday, May 22nd (WILD)
Now for the WILD that was originally intended in the schedule...

I ate two slices of pizza before bed on a full stomach and was STILL hungry when I woke up. What the hell? I've noticed that now that I'm getting more sleep (and drinking more water) that I am hungry more than before. Back when I got five hours of sleep a night, I wouldn't be hungry at all in the morning and could barely finish lunch. Now I'm hungry all morning and order seconds >.> I guess the best explanation is that my body is actually resting and repairing, and that requires more energy. Which is a good thing.

I woke up, only staying up a bit before laying back down. This time I had woke up after four hours of sleeping, in hopes of identifying my best REM period. This is worse than the five hour one, but I did get good practice on my breathing.

No results. I woke up earlier than my alarm in the morning, to my mother's voice, which destroyed any recall.

-Friday, May 23rd (DILD)
No results...

Slept later but woke up later. Recall was gangraped by my little sister and her best friend waking me up in the morning and bribing me with chocolate donuts to walk them up to the park.

For clarity, and in the spirit of my mentor, Mr Ears, its time for a list of things that would contribute most to my lucid journey:

-Living somewhere out on my own and a reasonable distance away from my family.

-That is all.

-Saturday, May 24th (WILD...?)
Interruptions made this switch to a DILD. So another replacement next week is in order.

Blame my family, a very late dinner, and Hideo Kojima.

EDIT: There are three fragments contained here, so I shifted them over on the dream counter to the date of my most notable fragment, where I attempt to kill pj.

In the past week my sleeping schedule has been more erratic. It went from shotty to too much sleep to normal sleep again. I've had three consecutive mornings of recalled fragments, and I believe the only reason they are fragments is because I didn't wake by alarm.

For the purposes of dream counting, I'll put them all into today, and from now on record frags.

Another fragment, but recall is worse than usual. I can barely remember that I dreamed at all. This is prolly because I was woken up super early for work for some reason...

Often times I feel like I had just left a very very long dream in the morning, and then it irritates me that I can't recall anything in it.

[I seemed to ask myself why I would dream of a whale fin on the bottom of the truck, and quickly reasoned that it represented the food at this restaurant was very fattening.]

The beginning of my recall is the worse here, but I know that I was at a party of some sort and there was this aggressive person there. I'm not sure what he did or if he even did anything to cause my reaction, but I decided that he needed to be knocked out. Oddly enough I didn't go and do it myself o0 instead I looked for someone else. Someone important at the party, perhaps the host, was known as a famous fighter for one reason or another. Were he an actor, or a TV fighter, I just remember this character being rather superficial, not one to be good in a fight at a moment's notice, but he looked pretty when all conditions were right. There was someone else at the party who seemed to notice me asking this superficial guy (I don't remember our conversation but those thoughts of him being superficial were embodied by the interaction, even if the words weren't defined) and I looked to him and seemed to know he was someone who could get his hands dirty at a moment's notice.

Something ugly must've happened, because next thing I remember the aggressive man at the party had been shot and killed I think. I met up with some friends of mine and tried to leave the party, even though I'm pretty certain they weren't involved (they had known what was going on, and I think they saw it happen, but didn't necessarily pull the trigger), first going out the doorway where the aggressive man was standing (even at the beginning of the dream... he spent the whole dream life and death on that spot just outside the door) to see what had happened. He was laying on the floor with a big red spot on his chest... or his back... I don't recall which way he was facing, because just as we opened the door to check the body, the police were coming in after my friends.

Skip over randomly. I recall myself having some sort of girlfriend that worked somewhere up and out of the way from the building that served the current setting of the dream. It seemed like she was that person who works in the projection room of a theater, at least I get that sense from the conditions I can recall her in (I didn't necessarily create a specific job, but job qualities... whatever she did was a rather menial task, and one that kept her well out of sight). In order to get to her I had to walk up several lengths of stairs, and the spot at the foot of the last set of stairs was right in the focus of a hidden camera she had placed. She seemed to be rather excited to show me this and I also got a feeling that this was quite kinky for some reason o0

Skip over randomly again. My friends from the party (mind you I've never met these people but these DCs had a "friend I've always known" aura to them) and I were in a truck, and I was in the bed of it. We were apparently looking for a gang of men (DCs who had a "familiar enemy" aura), but doing so in such a way not to be hidden. I seem to think it was involved with the shooting at a party, but its possible its not... something happened prior in the dream to classify them as enemies, but I really can't recall. I'm not even sure what we were going to do once we found them, or once we avoided them, I just know it was important they didn't see or at least notice who we were and our intentions. There seemed to be two prominent enemies and another person that tagged along with them. It was a gangly man, I remember thinking he must've been retarded for the way he looked and acted, even walked... and I swear he looked like Dan Aykroyd.



Dan Aykroyd was playing a retard in my dream. Huh. Anyhow, there was a point where I grew very tired and laid down in the back of the pickup truck, with one of my ankles dangling off the edge of one of the sides, but then I quickly put my foot down in case someone would see it (dunno why >.>). Eventually we stopped at what I think was a Whataburger, but my friends went off without me. I got up from my nap a little annoyed since they didn't wake me up in case I was hungry. I remember somehow seeing the bottom of the truck then, and what appeared to be a large fin. Although the image I have now isn't of a whale's fin, it was very large and orange, and somehow I specified it as whale in my head. Here is something odd... I seemed to ask myself why I would dream of a whale fin on the bottom of the truck, and quickly reasoned that it represented the food at this restaurant was very fattening. Whale = blubber = fat. And for those of you don't know, orange is the primary color of the Whataburger fast food chain. Although I reasoned this clearly to myself, it did not bring lucidity.

Also as if to stifle any realization, my friend rushed back in with the food and I can see that the two enemies and retarded Dan Akyroyd had gone in the line just behind them. Luckily they didn't notice us.

Somewhere around here the dream ended. I don't consider this an actual dream, as it didn't really finished, and I can't recall enough of it to be considered solid... but its definitely a very large fragment.

And I almost forgot... I had a feeling that Dan was only acting retarded and was fooling everyone, even the enemy characters, and getting ready to strike in a dramatic plot twist. Weird.

I'm certain I would've had better success with this dream had people not gotten in the way at the end of it.

I recall the better part of this dream involving a lot of different tasks that were challenging physically. Go from here to here which involved some sort of acrobatics, even swimming o0 The other part of the dream I can recall happened in a school setting, but not necessarily any school I've ever been to. I met Kenz there, and sort of kind of friend of mine. He handed me a box of some sort, and without my asking started explaining to me what it is. I knew it had something to do with Cristina (a mutual friend, and one we've both had a romantic interest in at one point or another...), and as he was slowly explaining it in  afew sentences, I heard my brother and his friend who is staying over barge into my room and scrounge around for a bit.

I tried to keep my focus, but alas, Kenz words made less and less sense until it was just gibberish, and then the dream in its entirety vanished. I probably had this dream as its possible I'll see both Kenz and Cristina this summer...

A few fragments. One I had a decent memory of but fell back asleep before I could write it down. Another was quite long and involved a lot of zombies, attacking a mansion. Very crazy. I recall people talking about the bites, watching zombies bang their fists against windows the size of walls, and running down a staircase while many other survivors were running up it o0 trying to escape something and I seemed to want to head right for it.

However, there is a lot of this dream I forgot. So fragments they are.

Also, I didn't mention, I got to sleep in today and so woke up just naturally. Then fell asleep. Then woke up. Then fell asleep.

It seems as though everytime I wake up on my own my recall is better than normal...

[August 2nd, 2008. Saturday (None)]

August 2nd, 2008. Saturday (None)

This dream had more of a flow than the ones I had last time, so I'm chalking it up as an actual dream. Recall could still very well be improved on this, I remember clearly being in other parts, but they're missing from my memory now.

I had this new phone (probably the iPhone I have on order right now that hasn't come in yet) and I looked through it to find pictures of this girl I hardly knew chocking an ex of mine (initials SB, I'll call her S for this dream). I seemed to have knowledge of her earlier in the dream, but its foggy now. S herself wasn't out of place but to see this new girl (apparently, a significant other in this dream or potential one o0 someone I had seen for a little while or something. I don't remember who it was now, but in the dream, she wasn't random at all). It seemed that the feeling I got was she was fighting S, my ex, away from me. I send these pictures to ex and get no response.

S lives far away in reality. In this dream, she doesn't. Because my parent's truck is stolen, and I know she did it. In another car there seemed to be a clue of some sort, a slip of paper or something... or maybe I'm just creating the clue. For some reason I knew she went to the university (even though I've never been in a university... just my community college, and thats not where she went). I asked the neighbors if I could borrow their car, and apparently the husband was a professor of some sort. I remember having an odd and pointless conversation with him until eventually they let me have their vehicle.

I can't drive... or can't drive well, in reality. Maybe thats why I completely forget everything that happened on the way to the university. Apparently, something had happened on the way, because as I sifted through the crowds of people in the hallways, who apparently knew what was going on (I could somehow tell that the thing between S and I had spread throughout the student body like a good rumor, and people seemed to stop whispering and give me a knowing glance as I walked by), I remember clearly saying "I crashed two cars on the way over here. Where is she?".

On the ground was a box, a small one, and inside was a latter. It was terribly scrawled like a four year old did it (why is the handwriting in my dreams so terrible?), and it was from her. Said "I love you" a few times and something about running away together somewhere really cheap o0 and I don't know how money became involved. When recalling this after waking up, I suppose that its because our house was foreclosed upon recently and we keep looking for houses.

Someone who had apparently seen where S went and was waiting for me so he could drive me there. He said something that seemed to be of importance, but I woke up somewhere right here and don't recall. This dream is odd to me because I haven't given S much thought lately. She left me a few years ago (people break up with me, it never seems to be the other way around) and we still keep contact today. Not the typical ex tension with her, she's a really good friend now.

And now, some fragments. You see after I woke up with this, I discovered my physical dream journal had no pen in it like it usually does. So, I quickly went to my laptop and opened up a copy of pj's interview from long ago and wrote little bits and pieces as I would in my actual dream journal. I read these before posting here and they helped recall.

My family was leaving me alone for some reason this morning. Although I had good intentions on sleeping earlier than usual last night, I tossed and turned and ended up sleeping around 3... which was 3 hours past when I had tried to go to sleep. So of course, I sleep in. After typing some little notes on this dream in wordpad, I went back to bed and woke up several times, producing fragments.

In one, I had frozen my little sister. Just like Sub Zero from Mortal Kombat. I watched the ice climb up her body and enshroud it, ending around her face. Her expression was first of shock, then of annoyance (the same look she gives me when I bug her in reality XD). I decided that she was my sister, so I wouldn't roundhouse kick the ice block and shatter her into a million pieces, as what happens typically in the game.


I had another fragment with Doug from Weeds in it. He seemed to be telling me something that was deep and important, but I don't recall what it is. This is odd of him, because in the show Weeds he's usually the lovable moron.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thPN6-5tA9Q   Language and very slight image warning. The "runway" guy is Doug.

As I went to sleep again after this one, I was thinking of something and it randomly popped up as the onset of a dream. Once I realized this, I'd regain consciousness. I tried it again but when I will it it doesn't work. Then not trying, it works again. It was the onset of a dream, not a full fledged one... similar to what I get in my WILD attempts. Very odd.

[June 26th, 2010 (Seizure Technique?)]

June 26th, 2010 (Seizure Technique?)

I have a fragment or two occuring before this one, due soon, but the events of today I feel took precedence. Quote from my Awake Journal post:

I got back to the seam to start working again, and as I stabbed my needle into the seam, I remember having the slight inclination that I was feeling woozy and maybe should get a glass of water. From then, I don't even remember letting go of the needle. It happened that quick.

While I was out, I had some crazy dream sequence. It was a flash of blurred, fast moving, nondescript images accompanied by a odd sound like a large machine humming, or like static.

The next moment of cautiousness I had was hearing my dad's voice saying "what're you doing?". My immediate thought was I was back home, in my bed, and I had slept in and was late for work. Then my surroundings became clear and I realized I had just been standing up seconds ago.

...

But that sure was an event. And that series of images I got was very akin to a dream. It "felt" like a dream, albeit it very abrupt, jarring, hard to understand... very freaky. I could describe it as a broken tv from hell playing in my mind.

Obviously counting this one as a fragment. Perhaps my freakiest fragment.

[June 18th, 2010 (None)]

June 18th, 2010 (None)

(Note: This and the fragment following are long before the seizure dream, they are being posted VERY late)

In this fragment it was night time, and I remember looking across the street and seeing an online friend of mine, who I will call WIA?, about to be mugged by two nondescript assailants. For a brief background, WIA? (which is an abbreviation of his screenname) is an admin at the RP site I run. There wasn't more background to this dream than that - I don't know what WIA? looks like in person, and details of his appearance weren't very clear. I just identified it as him, and he was being attacked, and I needed to help him. I ran across the street and into the grassy area they were in, reaching them just as the guy who was going to attack his back side was closing in.

I grabbed him from behind his neck and immediately dragged him into the grass. I felt what I could only imagine a fight or flight sensation to be - kind of like how I felt sparring back in my Tae Kwon Do days, but with a deeper sense of urgency. I felt like I needed to make it to where this person couldn't hurt me, like my survival was dependent on it. As soon as we hit the ground, with the back of his head against of my torso, I started to gouge his eyes out. I don't remember the tactile sensation of this at all, my senses in this dream were mostly only visual. There was an odd moment where I was trying to process the action of gouging out his eyes; since he was facing away from me, I would have to use my fingers, but since my first inclination of the action "gouge" is to use my thumbs, the dream responded by making his head sort of twist around while my hands were wrapped around it.

This effort to meet reality was actually ignored, and I felt that I was now pressing my thumbs into his skull and not his eye sockets anymore, as if the spinning of his head were somehow to avoid having his eye gouged out.

I don't remember anything else. I would have liked to think I helped WIA?'s chances of survival in the situation, but thats where the dream leads off. Pretty freaky fragment.

[July 19th, 2010 (None)]

July 19th, 2010 (None)

(Note: As before, this is a really late entry)

I lost a lot of recall from this dream, just by not posting it for so long. However, there was never enough of it to begin with for me to consider it a full dream in the first place.

It was an odd situation. The city (a nondescript city by the way - I didn't really recognize anything that attached it to somewhere I've been before) was infested with zombies. However, for some reason, this was just a game. As if the zombies were actors, but not. I might liken it to a real life video game, where the zombies are "played" by people, and at the end everyone ends up ok. Its only a competition of sorts. However, it wasn't like a real video game, but like the premise of a video game in real life.

The goal was to be one of the last surviving humans, people who were bitten joined the zombie "team". I remember my brother was with me the entire time. We left a building we were in (parts of this dream occured at this point, but I lost recall of it upon waking, and even more upon not recording it). We were in a truck and for some reason, my brother thought it was a good idea to drive some place we knew there was a horse drawn carriage. While in a truck, we were going to get a horse drawn carriage, so as to escape and avoid the zombies. That was his plan. Stranger still, I thought this was a good idea.

For some reason, although the knowledge that none of this really counted and we'd be perfectly fine was in the back of my head, I was still extremely tense. We made it to the location of the horse drawn carriage (which, by the way, didn't have any horses - that didn't seem to disuade us from the plan). We got out of the truck and were attacked by zombies of the opposing team. I remember my brother was "gotten", not specifically what injuries or attacks he incurred, but I knew he had converted. I don't remember anything else, if I won the game or is the horseless horse drawn carriage made a strategical difference.

Possible Cause: It was around this time I was playing a game called "Urban Dead" which is a low tech MMO browser game where players can be both humans and zombies as they try to take control parts of a quarantined city. I've since stopped playing this game due to lack of interest, but I can't deny the similarity. It would also explain why I didn't get "video game graphics" in this dream and it was more like real life, since Urban Dead's graphics is nothing more than text and boxes with names for buildings.

[July 9th, 2010 (Accidental WBTB)]

July 9th, 2010 (Accidental WBTB)

To be honest, I can't recall if the first part of this fragment was before or after when I woke up. I woke up at 7 am, then went back to sleep, expecting to be woken up to go to work in an hour or so. I didn't get woken up at all, and later woke up around 11. So this was an unintentional WBTB.

The first part of the fragment is really foggy to me now, since it was the earlier part of the dream, but it involved zombies who I was avoiding with a group of other survivors. I remember towards the end of this fragment, I made it to a large open area, perhaps like the school's basketball court, or a wide lobby (the reason I'm not certain is I'm pretty sure these are details my waking mind inserted to fill in the gaps). A lot of the staff and some other survivors were discussing how they were going to leave the building. This part of the dream has become so foggy, its barely worth recording.

...

The next part of the dream is much clearer. I am in a car in the parking lot at my school. I can actually recognize it being my school in this part of the dream, which usually isn't the case when I dream in a school setting. It is the high school I used to go to, and the high school my brother goes to now. Except, in the dream, my brother is about to join the football team (when he's already been playing it in for quite a while). Its as if he had tried out, and they were going to tell him if he was accepted (something you don't have to do; you just join). We are outside the fieldhouse. We are talking, but I am focusing on a set of assignments that have been typed out on a sheet of paper for me, separated per course.

My brother learns that he was accepted, and all the football players and coaches (nondescript) rush out to congratulate him. I get out of the car to go congratulate him, and I give him a high five which is more like me slapping his hand. Since its a moment of excitement for everyone, it seems like something I should do, but when I do it its as if the party stops, everyone is quiet, and he just looks at me weird. Its very awkward.

The next part I remember, I'm in a study hall of sorts with tables and chairs, examining assignments. I am stressed out, because I have multiple assignments due, and even in the dream I feel like I've been out of school for a long while; this doesn't seem to click however, and I feel as though I'm responsible for these assignments and its terribly important I save myself here. I even remember trying to figure out one of the assignments, but its nonsensical gibberish (I realize its nonsensical now that I'm awake; in the dream, its as if I was trying to figure it out and it wasn't gibberish, just difficult). I don't recall the exact content.

Later in the dream, I pick up the sheet of paper that has my assignments on it, but a black woman student (nondescript besides that)  claims that its her paper. I tell her its definitely not, this is my paper, I was just looking at it. She says no, thats your paper, and I notice another piece of paper right next to it. I apologize, and noticing the papers look similar from far away (as in, the writing is bunched together in columns with times per class, and from a non legible difference you couldn't tell the papers apart) tell her it was my mistake and our sheets looked almost the same.

Somewhere around here I wake up.

[July 10th, 2010 (Hypnotic Suggestion? mu's SP summon technique?)]

July 10th, 2010 (Hypnotic Suggestion? mu's SP summon technique?)

Click here for a lengthy explanation for methods and other factors that may or may not have contributed to this dream.

I woke up naturally today somewhere in the seven hour of the am. I didn't seem to have any reason for getting up, except thats when I've gotten up for work in the past few weeks. I had very decent recall from this, and went over it in my head a few times before going back to sleep.

Later on around eleven my sister woke me up looking for an iPhone charging cable, even though it was exactly where it was supposed to be. This not only annoyed me, but it completely slaughtered my recall, although I know for certain I had a second and just as long dream.

The dream I remember was enough for me to consider a "full dream" because it had a somewhat stable plot line and multiple "scenes" to it.

The earliest part I remember, I was flirting with this psychologist - it may have been a professor. I seem to remember it being not in person - perhaps via phone or email. I was beginning to consider this person as a potential girlfriend, even though I have one in the waking world (and she'll probably read this soon). This is the "blurriest" part of my dream, since it occurs so early on. I didn't have a pencil when I woke up, so I couldn't jot details down unfortunately.

In another part, I was in a nondescript city. There were more zombies (last night, I was talking to a few people about how I keep having zombie dreams, and I think that just reaffirmed their prescence in my dreams). There was just a knowledge that the city was in zombie epidemic/survivior colony panic mode. I went to a book store - for some reason, this is related to the psychologist from before. I may have been looking for a book she had written. I seemed to somehow brag about her to the store's clerk (this is likely just waking world rationalization; the psychologist, and me bragging about her, was more of an essence than actual words to the clerk. So I probably rationalized "I'm involved with the psychologist who wrote this book" upon recall). I do remember specifically asking him if he still accepted money, or if there was some sort of bartering system now (y'know, with the zombie apocalypse going on). Looking back on it now, its actually a good question; and as if because I was asking him that, the clerk happened to be stacking big piles of change, particularly quarters. I'm not sure what he answered, but I remember leaving the store and seeing their store front windows clearly when I walked out.

In another scene of the dream, I was running from a zombie. There was this section that I believed to be the entrance to a "safe house" of sorts that survivors could get to. Describing it now, I don't really understand how it could possibly work, but in the dream it made sense. It was this large rectangular area, sort of like an awning separated from a building, but coming down the sides were those vertical plastic flaps that you might see covering a freezer, or a loading dock in a warehouse, or a hospital, or sultry other places (if anyone can tell me the proper name for this, it'd help me out). It obscured sight but it was easy to run through, and somehow I processed that to mean that it was helpful for getting rid of zombies that were chasing you (this "hallway" of hanging plastic also lead to the entrance of the "safe house" so combined they must have seemed like a good strategy).

So I'm being chased by this zombie, the fast kind, and its gaining on me so I run through the plastic so that I'm under the awning, and then quickly back out. My reasoning here is that when I enter the end of this rectangle, the plastic will obscure me from his vision, so when I cut at 90 degree angle and run through the side of the rectangle really quick, by the time the zombie catches up and enters the awning, I will have effectly "disappeared" by running from it at the side. Looking at it now, its actually a damned fine idea, if not for the plastic flapping when you run through it. But I suppose a zombie wouldn't be able to process that.

I do this a few times and elude the zombie quite well, and finally enter the safe house of sorts.

This next part feels like its part of the same dream, but since the zombies and psychologist aren't entirely involved, it might be a separate fragment. I seem to have the "knowledge" of the psychologist and the zombies, so I feel it is linked.

I am in a computer lab, like one at school. I don't remember what I was doing, except I did something I thought was hilarious (and other students found quite funny too). I took the little headset head phones these labs are always equipped with, open them up and turn them on myself, then press them to my chest as if they are defibrillator paddles, and say "clear!" and make a shocking sound and voluntarily convulse as if I'm being shocked. I do the same and shock other people too, something I think would be awkward but I as well as everyone else seems to find it hilarious.

My fragment after this, the second time I woke up, was completely annihilated. Waking me up and then asking me to process a question in the first fifteen seconds I'm awake is a good way to both annoy me, and ruin any recall. I'm recording a fragment here, but without details, I wonder if it even counts.

Possible Causes:

As I said before I was explaining both to WIA and ribbons last night that I keep having zombie dreams, and this undoubtedly came back. I'm not sure where the psychologist and bookstore come from; although I did read a very very very old post I made here at MM yesterday about an experience I had at a book store. The vertical hanging plastic thinggies (STILL don't know what to call them, I hope everyone knows what I'm talking about) I've come into contact with loading stuff into a Bass Pro shop, I've seen it in a movie a few weeks ago for a makeshift human body freezer, and a month or so back played a game with zombie-esque creatures in a hospital that had them. I don't think any of these really caused that, but I'm looking for anything possible really.

[August 2nd, 2010 (WBTB/ Failed WILD?)]

August 2nd, 2010 (WBTB/ Failed WILD?)

This was after my second attempt of WILD, elaborated here in my awake journal. I woke up with a different fragment in mind, struggled to recall it, then lost it. Afterwards, a slight memory of a different dream with Pete in it (one that occurred before the fragment I struggled with) stirred and I managed to recall some of the details. Still highly fragmented though unfortunately.

I am talking to Pete about lucid dreaming. I don't recall seeing him in front of me or in person, but I don't know that it was definitely online either. Towards the end of the conversation he says "its your decision"; the decision is very important. I'm supposed to check my pms for what he's talking about (this leads me to believe, after waking, that we were talking online somehow). I don't recall what I find there, except I am pleased and amused by it.

(Note: since my return, I've been recording these the morning I recalled them, no longer the night before as I used to. This is just... easier <.<)