The Butterfly Girl: A Star is Born

#62 Dogfight

[Sophia]

After the arrangement, we spent the next month training harder and longer. Always taking the weekends off to rest and restore our stamina. Sometimes I often did research to see if I could find some new games or lesson we could do to improve our skills. Surprisingly, most of them ended up being Improv Games.
Back at school, the Drama class that I took always did warm-up exercises at the start of every day. Sometimes just warming up our voices, trying to get us energized so we could all put that energy into making the characters we played a lot more believable and realistic. But other times, my teacher would always have some sort of improv game we played with everyone and then ask us what the purpose of the exercise was. I always thought it was interesting. But doing the exercises, not so much. It's not that I didn't enjoy them, it was mainly because I wasn't always comfortable with it. I mean that as a group. All the games we did always had us interacting with everybody, they always do. I think they're always supposed to include that because it's important. And I understand that, but at the time I was just never comfortable with it. It was at that point of my life where I was figuring things out and constantly interacting with other people I didn't even know just made me feel really awkward. Additionally, I never really liked having to exert all my energy into playing a character or even just doing basic actions and gestures.
Now that I think about it, I think I was just lazy and tired. But the exercises were still fun and interesting.

Having and expecting to put so much energy five to six hours a day, five days a week is just so much. Way too much. Being forced to do that, it's just wrong and almost cruel, dare I say it.

But this time. This time was different.

When I woke up to get ready for school, I remembered how much I dreaded it. I remember how I always had to pull myself everywhere, despite knowing how much I really didn't want to do whatever they told me to do. But I knew I couldn't avoid it, even if I did absolutely nothing, the consequences were too much for me to bear. Yet I had to continuously pull myself through anyway.
But when I wake up now, not for school, knowing that I've got work to do. I accepted it. Because this was important. And sometimes I'd tell myself to get ready and be prepared for whatever today was going to be.
Sure, Physical Exhaustion is... well, exhausting. A whole days worth of training can really drain you. The bumps, the bruises, the scratches all over your arms and legs, not to mention the sore muscles that can make it difficult to do even basic things. Sometimes, you might even be afraid you'll pull a muscle or damage something important. And you still manage to go through your days as well as you can.
However, Mental Exhaustion is... it's unhealthy. And most of the time, especially these days, it's practically unavoidable.

But like I said before, this time was different.

When I showed everyone these improv games, I put all the energy I could into getting everyone involved. Sometimes it was hard for me to explain how the games worked and getting everyone to understand the rules sometimes took longer than actually playing the games. But as long as everyone was having fun and understanding the purpose of the exercises, the I knew it would all be worth it.
And look, I'll admit there were some days where even I would make up excuses not to play because I was tired from the previous days and my arms and legs were too sore for me to move.
Yeah, most of the time it was me. And sometimes each of us would have some sort of excuse for not wanting to do any training. Not at the same time, of course. But just occasional days where either one of us, or some of us would just sit out and watch the rest of us go along. And yes, more than, we all sort of gave in and decided to just do nothing all day instead of train. Not like, in a lazy way. Just because we were kinda exhausted and we knew we probably couldn't pull through another day of training, so we just went into our own little corners and did whatever we pleased. Either if it was just lounging around and conversing with one another, or just doing something by ourselves and watching everyone else doing something. But more to the point, we trained as much as we could, as hard as we could, until we thought we were satisfied enough to call it a day.