I've had a reality check in my dream once where I was trying to do calculations on my phone( or was it trying to send a message?, I had both of those at one point ) But no matter how hard I tried, the inputs did not match/did not show up on the screen. Even though, I knew that technology does not hold its form in dreams very well, I still didnt quite get to the elusive lucid dream.

I know I have been able to influence my dreams in a minor degree, but not all the way into lucid dreaming. Like once I influenced a log race with crocodiles to change into a log race with cartoony mechanical crocodiles.

I have tried the dream journal, though I got tk the point where I was just recounting the crazy and practically action movie style of dreams I was getting and it took almost an hour to recount all the details. I didn't keep that up consistently a lot of early wake ups and long writings was unmanageable for the long run. Though I loved being able to remember those dreams for longer periods of time after waking up.

I heard that one way to help induce a lucid dream was to recount your day by going backwards throughout your day. Though someone I knew did try that and ended up giving themselves nightmares, so yeah.

As cool as the experience of lucid dreams are, I'm alright with not 100% getting there. The dreams I have on that daily are pretty awesome and they are like action movies every night. I don't think anyone goes and gries to lucid dream a heist in the Gold dinosaur graveyard while getting chased by ninjas with light sabers.