To dream, perchance to sleep

My father-in-law used to claim that he rarely dreamed in his sleep. The dreams that he could recall usually occurred after he first roused from sleep in the early hours of dawn before settling back into slumber. He was so perturbed by these seemingly vivid dreams that he made it a habit to just get out of bed at 5a.m. to avoid falling back asleep and dreaming.

I always thought that he probably dreamed all night long and didn't remember most of them.

But then, recently, I realized that maybe some people really don't dream very much at all. And what made me realize this was checking my sleep data on my Fitbit.

See my outlier dot in the REM sleep category? I have more dreams than the average bear. Which likely means that my FIL was probably someone who fell in the lower range of average when it comes to dreams.

Personally, I love dreaming. 40% of the time, I'm dreaming about food and eating. 30% of the time, I'm dreaming about flying. The rest of the time, I have random assortment of dreams, everything from hanging out with my deceased relatives (like my mom, and my in-laws) and being happy that their death never actually happened to being at a conference and not being able to find my hotel room or being late for my flight. Occasionally, I'll have traditional nightmares.

But you know, I could probably use a bit more garden-variety sleep without dreams.

What about you? Do you seem to dream a lot? Do you remember most of them?