When we go to sleep each night, our minds become inhabited with strange, fantastical, and interesting dreams of people, places, and things we have seen or thought about day to day. The catch? Right as we wake up, these dreams tend to slip right out of our minds, out of existence forever.

I can't even put into words how many times I have woken up in the morning, with my eyes still closed, thinking about my dream and how cool, weird, or funny it was. The minute I open my eyes or flip over (most likely still half-asleep), somehow the dream I had just been thinking about disappears from my mind. I wish there was a word or phrase to describe this feeling of a dream disappearing and slipping into oblivion because it is a feeling and occurrence that many people experience.

This dream issue is the reason that one of my New Years Resolutions is to keep a dream journal.

In this day and age, it is so typical for much of society to think that the best way to record or remember a dream they had would be with a special app on their mobile device or using the notes app. As great as technology is, I really value notebooks that I can hold in my hand. Paper can contain such history and last many years, serving as evidence from diary entries past or tests we took in the third grade. My favorite moments are finding my first grade diary and reading about the happenings I thought were so important to record on paper at age seven. This is why I believe writing dreams down in a journal would help the dreams live on for a long time, not threatened by the risk of being deleted from an app.

My plan for a dream journal goes as follows:

Step 1: Purchase a journal that is small in size, one that will easily fit in the drawer of my nightstand & one that will not take up much space.

Step 2: Make sure to have this journal in very easy reach.

Step 3: ALWAYS have a pen handy, no matter what.

Step 4: Go to sleep, let my mind wander and dream whatever it likes.

Step 5: When I wake up in the morning, and still have the bits of my dream lingering in my head, immediately lunge for the journal and write down/sketch every last detail I remember: whether it be in paragraphs, bullet points, or random sketches thrown together.

Although this might be a silly idea, I believe that a journal of any type is important to keep at some point in one's life. Recording memories, especially in a hard copy on paper, is such a great way to look back on fun memories later in life. Just keeping a normal journal of life's daily happenings is always good, but a dream journal is a way to show and record the aspects of your current life in the crazy, warped way that dreams present themselves.

I can't wait to begin my dream journal when I get back to school for the spring semester, and I hope I've inspired you to start a dream journal of your own. Have fun recording and dream on!