Last night I had my first successful RC! The excitement of it woke me up shortly thereafter, but I feel like it was a big step for me. I've been slowly but surely making progress over the last 3 or 4 weeks, and this was my biggest step so far.
Last night on these forums actually, I read about how sometimes DCs will give hints to the dreamer that trigger lucidity. While I was going to sleep, I thought about how great that would be.
During my dream, I was sitting in the parking lot of a mall in the passenger seat of a friend's car. A family walked by and the youngest kid climbed onto the hood of the car, reached through the windshield (still didn't become lucid - hah, don't know how I missed that) and pinched my nose shut. I thought about how long I'd be able to hold my breath, but realized that I didn't need to! I could still breathe! The visuals of my dream faded really quickly because I got so excited but I was still partially asleep and still doing the nose RC and trying to relax and slip back into a dream, but no such luck
Also, I've noticed since I started really examining my dreams that an old friend of mine often makes appearances. She's someone I haven't talked to in years, and she's not always directly in the dream, but she'll be somehow involved, for example - before my experience last night, she was one of the people we were waiting in the car for at the mall. In most of my near-lucid or breakthrough dreams I've had lately, she has been a part of the previous dreaming. I think that's a strange coincidence and I'm going to keep a watch out for her from now on.
Sorry to ramble, I'm just really excited