I have this experience every morning, and have been having long semi-aware dreams for years. More recently I have been on medication to try and help me but it just makes the dreams better and harder to wake up from.
A lot of them are dreams where I follow a story, like having a job or going to a city. I tend to do a lot of exploring and it's interesting to look back at some of the buildings and locations I thought up in my mind. Sometimes I use the interesting ideas in my short stories. I can remember the dreams most of the time, and have a reoccurring one maybe once a week. They're always very long, and although they don't seem realistic looking back on them while awake, they feel incredibly real while I'm dreaming.
The best one was when I had to save my partner's soul. Someone stole it and if I didn't get it back he was going to die, so I went on a chase to find it and bring it back. When I managed to grab it I had actually gone into the future somehow and he had been dead for 20 years. He had been turned into an AI program that was meant to replicate his personality, and he told me how he had never forgotten me for those 20 years and that he loved me every single day. I woke up and just balled my eyes out.
The most commonly occurring dream is me going back to high school. The school layout is usually a little different each time, but it has all the same people in it. There was a girl who went there that I ended up having a crush on, and most of these dreams have her talking to me or admitting she felt the same way. Of course I know it's not real and not going to happen. It's a good dream while I'm still asleep, but it depresses me once I wake up.
Also, I get a lot of the dreams where you're sure you're actually awake. I've done the whole 'give myself a pinch to be sure' bit and continue as if I were living normally, only to suddenly jerk awake in my bed. The worst it got was when I had a three tier nightmare. The first level I had to run around a haunted house, then I 'woke up' into the second tier where I was in my bed but couldn't move as the monster got closer. Then I once again 'woke up' into the third tier but this time it was morning and I went and drank my glass of water and got dressed as usual, only to finally wake up for real and begin questioning everything about my existence. It is terrifying not knowing if you are actually real or not.
I think the sad reality about dreaming is that the more dreams I have, and the better they are, the less I find that I want to actually wake up. It's at the point currently where I sleep on average about 12 hours a day, or about 16 maximum. I try to be an optimist, but realistically I have to say that as much as I love my dreams they are ruining my life because they are overtaking it. Everyday I open my eyes and then choose to fall back asleep, and I can't control it because I'm barely conscious. I desperately want to wake up and get control of my life, but I honestly don't know how when it feels so much better to just close my eyes and going back to sleep.