Telephone challenges

There is a good reason why I don't use my phone a lot. I'm rubbish at it.

I prefer email because I don't need to talk and if you were to ever speak to me on the phone in a professional setting you would completely understand where I'm coming from. Imagine this, I had anticipated to make this phone call for the past 12 hours now, I knew it was going to happen and so I played the conversation off in my head.

The plan was this:
"Good morning, this is X calling from Y University about the Conference taking place on May 15th. Am I speaking with Z?" They would respond yes because I know it's their phone number, Google never lies. "Am I calling at a busy time or would you have a couple of minutes to talk about the last details of the conference and what will happen on the day?" They would then likely say one of two things. They have time or they don't and present me with an alternative. Either way, it went well because from there on out, whether it is yes or know, I have had the details in mind for so long it's like a well practiced ballet.

I just wish what I thought and what I actually did had more connection. With this plan in mind, look at what the reality was of the situation:
He says hello and I am slightly caught off guard. The first silence pursues. "Hello, this is X calling from Y University, am I speaking with Z?" I finally say. "Yes" he says. I think to myself, 'excellent, on a good roll now. Time to recover from being weird.' and I say. "Hi, how are you?" The most awkward thing between this part and the previous was that as I was thinking to myself, I remained quiet, allowign for another awkward silence over the phone. However, he quickly responded with that it's not a very good time and if I could email him instead. This was fine by me, as I explained, I prefer email. But the phone call was overall traumatizing and I plan on never calling anyone ever again.

In hindsight it was probably better to ask "How are you?" than to just go off on the information on the conference as he would have had to interrupt me and that would have been worse. However, I could have made it all a little smoother by not being so incompetent at social life.