Wow, I did it. I verify having lucid dreamed. It was a messy, disturbed dream, possibly caused by the return of insomnia. After not being able to get to sleep, I got up for several hours and puttered around, then feeling some exhaustion lay back on my bed still not feeling like I would sleep, but then faded in and out of half-sleeps.

The key component in the dream was that I had my hardcover copy of the Tibetan Book of the Dead in my lap. I turned a certain way and ripped the paper covering over the hardcover, and was shocked and annoyed because it is supposedly a sacred book, which doesn't mean anything in itself, but it's one that I try to be mindful about.

I had negative thoughts, thinking things like, "damn", and realized it was only the paper covering that I could simply discard, and then saw the back of the covering had also ripped and more negative thinking, "total loss". Then I thought, "This isn't right, I can't have ripped the cover of the book because the book is sitting on my bookshelf. All I have to do is get out of "here" and it'll be there as always. Then I started struggling up through layers of consciousness.

As I was pushing myself out of sleep, I imagined the book on a bookshelf in my room that doesn't exist, but then as I came closer to consciousness, I revised the image so that it was sitting where it should be on my night table/altar, and I had the feeling that I was right, the book was fine, I'd been in a dream. When I broke the surface and woke up, the final position of the book on the table was a little different than I had imagined, but that's not the point.

This was a classic description of lucid dreaming – realizing being in a dream triggered by an object in the dream. However, I didn't navigate my way in the dream, but forced myself out of it, still realizing it was a dream.

This was very different from the strange sleep paralysis dream experiences I've had before. This felt like a dream in every way, whereas before I was in some lucid state where I didn't have a conscious sense I could "get out of". I never consciously processed that it was a dream, but was reacting like it was an actual experience, like in a dream. And in those states, even though I could move around, I did have a continued sense or connection with my physical body laying in bed but that it was paralyzed. That was still part of the actual experience, with no external thought of it being a dream.

I also have to totally retract what I said yesterday. Drowning in sleep doesn't suck nearly as much as insomnia. Furthermore, there is a difference between the insomnia I've been having, whereby I could sleep for 2 or 3 hours before waking up and not being able to fall back to sleep, and the type where you can't get into a full sleep at all, like today. That's worse. You don't even get the false comfort of being able to slip into a sleep state.

Aside from the lucid part, I have no recollection what was actually going on in this dream. It wasn't location specific, but some, if not all, of my family members were around and I think they were annoying me. It was in a public area, but I'm not sure if it was indoors or out. Just a lot of stuff going around, messy, but not all negative.

There was one situation that would have normally made me aggressive or combative, but I handled it calmly and wisely, the way I usually imagine handling a situation after an initial negative reaction and realizing that was wrong and would just make things worse.

This insomnia – yesterday and today – came as a total surprise after my last post and it's mucking my thoughts. I want to get out of the apartment either to ride or to shoot, it looks perfect outside for either – cloudy but unlikely to rain. But I'm not rested and I've been able to ride 3 days in a row, so I probably shouldn't.

I've been enjoying my brother's Nikon D80, to my surprise. It can't shoot sky for shit, the gradients come out all pixelized and may be why people recommend shooting in color and then removing the color components one-by-one to get black and white.

I've just been shooting in black and white mode because I don't even like the idea of shooting with an SLR in color. Not sure what my hang up is. Feels like I'm cheating somehow.

I'm gonna make coffee now. And make my fucking bed.