Earlier this year, I got to be on a Zoom for a speaker series that my parents subscribe to. The speaker was W. Kamau Bell and it was an incredible talk. I know my parents miss getting to go to those in person, but since they are online they can share one of their tickets with someone else. They have been enjoying other speakers this year and have invited friends of theirs to use the other ticket. But last week, my dad asked me if I wanted to be a part of another one.
I would have said yes without knowing who the speaker was since I knew it would be a great talk. But I was excited to find out that the speaker this time was going to be documentary filmmaker Ken Burns. I haven’t seen too many of his documentaries, but I love documentaries in general and thought this would be an amazing chat to learn about all the different movies he has done and he would be full of stories.
When my dad asked if I wanted to have the extra ticket, I was working so I took a note of the information from it. He told me the start time and let me know he’d be forwarding me an email with the link to the Zoom. I saw the email come in but didn’t worry about opening it since I had notes of when things would start.
That day, I went about my day like normal, planning for watching the Zoom later in the evening. I had a pretty relaxing evening before logging in and took my time making dinner and then doing some reading. Then, when I finally opened the email, I realized I wrote down the wrong start time! I had written down that it started at 8pm when it started at 7pm!
I was so mad at myself for this! If I had just opened the email earlier I would have seen this. But I was so sure since I wrote down a start time that I had it right. But I’m guessing I was distracted enough with work that I misheard my dad or wrote down the wrong thing. But instead of worrying about it too much, I tried to get logged in as quickly as possible. Since I was trying to log in early to have time before I thought it would start, I was about 45 minutes late and not a full hour late.
And even though I only got to hear the second half of the talk, it still was awesome. I haven’t seen a lot of his documentaries, but this talk made me want to check more of them out. And I loved hearing about the stories behind the filming and what inspires him to find new projects.
There is a chance that my parents will get a recording of the talk that they can forward to me so I can see what I missed. But even if I can’t, I’m still glad I was able to watch some of it. Even though I am starting to do more stuff outside of my house, I like having virtual events too. I can be a bit more relaxed at home for virtual events and that’s always nice.
The speaker series that my parents are a part of is done for this season and next season will be starting later this year. If they have more virtual events, maybe I’ll get to watch more of them. I hope I do because I do enjoy these deep dives into someone who is an expert or master of their field. And this particular series gets some of the most amazing speakers to be a part of it.
I just know that next time, I’ll look at the email to confirm the time instead of thinking I wrote it down correctly so I don’t end up missing half of the talk.
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