The most worthwhile parenthetical pursuit I can think of right now is to learn to lucid dream on command. (Parenthetical meaning, you know, something that isn't choosing a graduate school, or otherwise forging life's rocky path. Something hobby-ish.) There are so many things that I will never be able to do because of time or money constraints (visit every country in the world, go on waterslides all the time) or because these things are impossible in the physical world (fly, become a deep-sea creature) or just because I wouldn't have the wherewithal (sleep with anyone I please without any pesky rejection-related consequences). It seems a waste to have the capability to learn to do these things on command while asleep, and choose not to learn to do so. Especially since I'm starting from an easier place than most people, already lucid dreaming roughly once a month or so and remembering enough of most of my dreams to fill up a few handwritten pages.

I realize that lucid dreaming instead of going out and having real life experiences is a weak substitute, because what can happen in dreams is limited to the imagination, which in turn is limited to the experiences and knowledge it has drawn from while awake. Actually visiting a different country can create new paradigms, images, and ways of thinking, while dreaming of visiting another country really only reinforces whatever stereotypes one already holds of that country. So if the aim is to broaden, rather than to bask, lucid dreaming has failed.

However, I hold the view that basking is better than nothing (even if broadening is ultimately better than basking) and after all, it's possible to live AND dream, of course. But there are so many times in life when you're trapped somewhere, you're working and saving for something else, or just working and saving for being able to survive in the moment, and there's no time or money for vacations or even daydreaming, and you waste 8 or 9 hours sleeping and a slave to whatever insane concoction your brain cooks up for you. Why be a slave to an unknown concoction if you know what you'd rather have?

Anyway, that's why I think it's a worthwhile parenthetical pursuit. Carrying it out has not been so easy. The accepted method for going about increasing lucid dream likelihood is sometimes so comical and counterintuitive that I find myself neglecting it for weeks. It's simple, though, I'll give it that. I'm meant to ask myself, "Am I dreaming?" a bunch of times a day and then do a series of reality checks to find out. These reality checks look ridiculous to any outside observer. Pinch myself to see if it hurts. Try to point my finger through my hand. Check to see if I can read digital clocks, or a page of text, without it changing on me. Flipping light switches to see if they work.

There's a second step, involving some ritual I'm supposed to do when falling asleep, but I just can't wrap my mind around these reality checks in order to get there. The concept of asking yourself whether you're dreaming when you know you're awake just feels stupid, like, why would I ask myself something I already know the unequivocal answer to? I get the point, of course, and that is to get in the habit of asking the question so that while you're dreaming you get in the habit of doing it as well, and when you're dreaming your reality checks will, of course, fail, and there you are, lucid, pinching yourself (and probably rocketing awake)!

My first couple of attempts at lucid dreaming (distinct from those times where I just do it) have been comically conventional - exactly how you'd write it if you were to write about someone trying to dream. I realize I'm dreaming and everything starts fading. I feel like things are melting and I'm moving through maple syrup. I try to fly and I hover inches from the ground, mere gliding, while half of my vision remains in dreamland and the other half sees, stubbornly, my bedroom.

But I'm determined to do this and I will do this - bruises on my arm from constant pinching or no bruises on my arm from constant pinching.