Relatively long lucid dream, still need some advice though

This last morning I definitely had a lucid dream, and I would like some input from you here. :content:

Anyway, I remember lying in bed and doing WILD, but I’m not sure if I was actually awake while doing it - in any case I had success with it very easily, I heard sounds in my head almost instantly and saw strange scenes - then my “real” lucid dream began, and just like all my other LD’s this one started in bed.
The room looked different and my bed had turned 90°, and I also saw I had six fingers on both hands - and this time I was so sure it was a LD that I dared to go outside in my night suit right away without questioning anything or trying to “make sure”, since I got three extremely obvious dreamsigns right away (I actually remember someone was standing by my bed and telling me I had six fingers, and I was like “that means this is a lucid dream!”).
I had this “sleepy” feeling, so I struggled a lot trying to remain in the dream, but I managed to keep calm and also did frequent reality checks.

A while later I was in a kind of alley (although I don’t remember walking there) and I decided to improve my awareness by repeating my identity to myself, like my name, birthplace etc, and also frequently said to myself “this is a dream, I will eventually wake up but right now I’m dreaming”.
Things often felt very realistic, but still had this characteristic “dream-feel”, and sometimes felt a bit diffuse.
I suddenly decided to bring up a cute girl and I tried 2-3 times by imagining that she would appear around the next corner, but I couldn’t do it.
Then I believed I had woken up, but my room still looked unusual which tipped me off it was still a dream - and then I woke up for real.

One problem was that I didn’t feel excited the way you should do in a lucid dream - I’m sure that I know what it should feel like, I often imagine that I’m in a dream when I’m outside in the garden very early in the morning, and it’s definitely a spiritual and wonderful imagination, but I can’t seem to get that feeling in my dreams; I’m more like, “oh cool, a lucid dream, time to explore”, but it feels like I’m still missing something.

Anything I can do to improve this experience to a very high-quality lucid dream?

I think you’re doing just fine. I guess you need more experience in lucid dreams in order to experience this feeling. Sometimes it comes by itself when you are overexcited but the real feeling comes from you. I mean when you will have better control, well not maybe just control but the sense of where you are and realization what you can do then you can easily create this feeling because at the end it comes from you.

I think you didn’t have it in this particular dream because like you said you had sleepy feeling and all your intention was pointed to prevent that. Like frequent RC’ing and reminding yourself that you are in a dream. Higher level of lucidity don’t require that and you are immediately more focused on surroundings and you immediately absorb more information and the feeling of the dream is more intense therefore everything seems very real.

You can achieve all that with practicing in a lucid dream. It may seem that spending few minutes at the start of every dream trying to calm down and absorb as many information as wasting time but trust me, it’s not. By that you can start to feel dream from the start. You may be kicked out but this feeling you had few minutes can be more satisfying then half an hour blurry lucid dream…

Do that at every lucid dream and you will with time start to prolong your lucid dreams but this practice from the start of the dream will “follow” you through out the whole dream… :content:

Good luck!