Oh This Is A Great Conversation Byeeeeee!!!

I did my third and final Zoom for the club I help run last/Saturday night.  I've been dreading it, as I've dreaded all the Zooms, because I am not a sociable person and I am not the type to continue throwing topics out just to break the silence.  But I do these Zooms anyway because I feel obligated to keep this organization together.

Besides, I have a de facto ace up my sleeve: Zoom meetings, at the Basic level, are only 40 minutes long.  I figure if the meetings drag or if we run out of stuff to talk about, no worries; at worst I will have to suffer through 40 minutes of uncomfortable silence.  By the way, I don't know why, when you schedule a Zoom, they are timed out in 15 minute increments; if the basic unit of a Zoom meeting is 40 minutes, why can't you schedule a meeting for just 40 minutes?  And by the way, why is Zoom Basic a maximum of 40 minutes?  That time limit seems like an odd number for a free videoconference.  Shouldn't it be an hour, or 30 minutes?

So even though I extended our June meeting not once but twice because the only person who came on with me had a riveting story about, no joke, coffee makers -- and I think I just re-clicked on the Zoom link after we got kicked out; if that's all we needed to "extend" our Zoom, why would I ever need to pay money for its Pro version? -- I kept it at 40 minutes (well, 45 minutes; the Event time spans are divided only in 15-minute increments, like when setting up a Zoom meeting) just like me and my good friend did for our July Zoom.  I wasn't really feeling talking to people through the computer, but 7 o'clock rolled around and I had to keep the social club fires burning.

To my astonishment, and to my ever-enduring gratitude, three other people showed up.  It was a party ... well, sorta; I guess there were some dead spots in the conversation, which is inevitable when all the parties aren't completely familiar with each other.  One popped on quick before heading out the lake just beyond his property, but the other two were really rolling on a topic just as we were getting to 7:40.  Whoops.

I brought up Zoom just in case it felt necessary to quickly schedule another Zoom right afterward (even though, like I said, back in June I was able to just click the link to the originally-scheduled Zoom and we were back in and back on).  Then I barged into a pretty involved conversation between both other participants to remind both were bumping up to the 40 minutes Zoom allows us to use for free.  Then, one of the two asked me about another social event I might be doing for later this month.  I told her about my tentative plans and then said, "So ... yay or nay?" to which she replied, "No, I'm done."  I was referring to my event later this month, but she thought I was talking about the Zoom.  Awkward.

So neither of them needed to extend the conversation -- even though it felt like the conversation they were having was good enough to continue.  Thus, I went into the Zoom scared that no one wanted to talk, and it ended by me abruptly and tersely ending a talk before people were done talking.  Man, I'm such a heel.  And I am so bad at hosting and socializing.  They must think I'm rude and stupid.