Remembering Your Dreams, Made Easy

With the help of a technology lifehack I've discovered a fascinating new side of myself, I'm a damned creative dreamer.

I always had a feeling that I had very adventuresome dreams, but until now, I have never been able to recall them in such detail.

Like just the other night, I had a vivid dream where...

I was the dictator of an underwater society that lived in a giant submarine (with skyscrapers on its hull). Our submarine was hit by a torpedo dropped by a Japanese WW2 zero. So the people of the underwater society decided to depose me as their Dear Leader, and they condemned me to death by giant manta ray. So I put on my mask and snorkel (similar to the mask and snorkel I used years ago in Nicaragua) and went for a swim next to the mega submarine, in the blue depths beneath me I could see the Manta Ray, it shot me with a dart (apparently Manta Rays can shoot darts!) but I was still able to swim, the Manta Ray closed in on me and began to thrash me with its massive wings (which didn't hurt very much). I could see its glistening fangs. Then I woke up.

This is just one of my nighttime adventures last week...

I battled stormtroopers while escaping from a version of hell that would put many a video game designer to shame, and I experienced zero gravity traveling to the center of the Earth.

I'll share one more that was particularly vivid (and fun)...

I was walking down the street in the urban center of some city. Everybody was tense about something. Then, in the sky appeared two UFOs that sort of looked like SR-71 Blackbirds or MIG-25s, but they were flying backward. This shocked, astonished, and terrified everyone. Then I ran up to an apartment building where my brother Alex lived. The apartment building was trashed, like some sort of a catastrophe had occurred. My brother and I frantically organized supplies for survival. Around this time, I became aware that I was in the midst of a lucid dream. Then I found myself in a different setting; some sort of camp or resort near the ocean. People were having fun. There was a diving board for jumping into the ocean. I went to go jump in, but someone warned me that the board was not long enough to make it in. I got up on the board, and it was indeed too short. So I jumped off from the side of the platform into the ocean - I pole-vaulted in. The ocean bottom was rocky. I bounced off the bottom and flew up into the air above the camp. Then, I was flying above models of civic buildings with national flags behind them.

Indulge me in a little dream analysis of this last one; in the current year, the civilization is in shoddy shape, and the public is held in a state of terror and paralysis by the mainstream media's nonstop COVID fear-mongering. Everything is so backward - that's the way I see it, at least, and I'm doing everything I can to survive the intensifying Absurdistan of modernity. The second half of the dream, when I was in the fun place - I don't know what it signifies. The final part, me flying over flags and civic buildings, probably signifies my anti-authoritarian, anti-statist leanings. I'll add that this dream occurred while I was listening to a holosync-style sleep induction track.

I remember them with voicenotes...

1. When I sleep, I charge my phone within arm's reach.
2. Before I go to bed, I turn the brightness of my screen completely down and put it in airplane mode. 
3. When I awake from a dream between 4 AM - 8 AM, I record a voice note with as many details as I can recall from the dream. If you voice journal your dreams within about 10 minutes of waking up, you'll recall many details - if you wait until the morning, your recall will be very vague.
4. Install the voicenotes widget on the home screen of your iPhone or Android, and it takes all of about three seconds to open a voice note and start recording.

Important: When you start recording, don't stare directly at the glowing screen - turn it away from your face - as it will hurt your sleep quality.

Update: I used to use Evernote voice notes for this, but recently, I broke up with Evernote (it wasn't me, it was them!) because they jacked up their full-featured premium plan to $130 a year (I once paid $25 for it!) Sorry Evernote, you're fancy but NOT that fancy! Any voicenotes app is fine, although my favorite is Miidio Recorder with its sleep-friendly black background.

Like a lot of people, I've tried dream journals before, but by the time I had found my dream journal, a pen, and turned on the lights, I had forgotten some or all of the dream, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of doing it. Now, it takes me just a few seconds to begin recording, and it doesn't disturb my sleep.

Have you ever had a lucid dream? If not, you're missing out on a lot of nocturnal adventure. Check out Inception in Real Life: 24 Lifehacks for Lucid Dreaming...