Dream Journal

Related: Later on, I gave up on trying to force lucid dreams because it isn’t relaxing. When cool or funny scenarios happened, I would tell them to my friends. It got to the point where during some dreams, I would think I need to remember this so I can recount to a friend. Soon after, I started keeping a regular dream journal. Each morning, I would try writing down everything I could remember from my dreams. This is to work out my brain in the morning. I’m not into dream interpretation, but it’s interesting to connect what happens in my dreams with influences from things that happened the day before. Mostly I do it to capture the crazy stories that happen. Because of the journal, I become semi-lucid more often trying to make note of what’s happening so I can write it down after I wake up. One time, I was even journaling the dream in Roam while dreaming! It was disappointing to wake up thinking I had it saved the dream but it wasn’t. I really wished for some kind of brain interface that would allow me access and write to my digital second brain while in a dream.

I’ve always had pretty vivid dreams. At some point, I decided to start recording the really cool ones.

My first entry is from 2014. My next entry was the following year. 2015 only had 5 entries. 2016 also had 5 entries. It wasn’t until 2018 when I started doing them regularly, just on the days that I remembered something interesting enough to write down. These were recorded in an Excel spreadsheet.

I discovered Notion in 2018, and then started recording them in there. But around 2019, I switched to Google Keep. When I wake up, my memories of the dream immediately start slipping away. Notion took too long to load. And it used internet, meaning I would see distracting notifications when I get on my phone, causing me to lose sight of dream details. Without that resistance in Google Keep, I began writing entries every day. Even if I completely forgot a dream, which happened every so often, I would note that down. Sometimes it was too hard to articulate what happened in the dream, so at a minimum I would write down a few keywords that sprung to mind. I’ve been doing this daily dream journaling since 2019.

Last October, I began using Obsidian, which offered the same advantage of Google Keep, but with the power to link to my daily note and across my second brain. I wrote a script to convert my multiple Google Keep notes into a markdown file that could imported to Obsidian.

Today, I did some organizing and changing of the format of my Obsidian dream entries. I used Notepad++ to bulk find/replace to add headings, and separate lines for date and time.

I do all this, but I rarely go back and read my entries. There have been times where I remember a certain dream with a friend, and search for it and find it. So that’s come in handy. I’ve also noticed a pattern where if I am really tired and don’t get enough sleep, it’s very difficult to remember my dream. I recently added to my morning checklist to proofread my dream journal, because when I’m groggy and trying to type on my phone, my fingers are not very accurate pressing tiny keys on a touchscreen. Some of my past entries are completely illegible.

I don’t think my dreams have meaning beyond subconscious processing and simulations. They are usually related to recent things that have been going on in my mind. I journal my dreams more as an exercise to work my brain in the morning. Some are very detailed, and I write a whole page detailing what happened. These are fun to look back on when I do. It’s amazing that even ones with keywords allow me to recall some of the visions and feelings from that dream. It’s like I’m capturing a small part of the elusive psyche. While taking improv classes, I realized that my dreams are good source to draw inspiration from, instead of making a scene up from scratch.

All in all, I stated dream journaling because it was fun. Now it’s a harmless compulsion.