A little about myself. I was a loner as a kid. Pretty stereotypical introvert. I only had a few friends growing up. I preferred "nerdy" activities and video games. Flash forward to age 18 and a USMC enlistment. I have to interact with people all the time, and it fucking sucks, I hate talking to people and its draining. I only have a few close friends, don't party or anything like that. Again, more stereotypical introvert behavior. Now I get out and enter the corporate world as a software engineer. I notice something, all the high earners are super extroverted people, they brown nose with higher ups and are basically talking all day long. I make the decision to purposefully make myself into an extrovert. I start forcing myself to talk to people, everybody I come across. I'm making small talk in elevators, I'm accepting invitations to parties, I'm doing networking with everybody.
I notice some very interesting things. The exhaustion I felt from social situations was due to my inexperience with them. I was so worried about making a mistake that I was becoming mentally exhausted because social interactions *were* work for me. When I forced myself to become proficient in talking to people the exhaustion went away completely. I now actually enjoyed being in social situations, but at the same time, unlike the classic extrovert (I will address the non-existence of this in a moment), I did not feel uncomfortable by myself, I still maintained the ability of the introvert to stay isolated without being uncomfortable with myself. When I moved states, I actually didn't have a single friend in my new state for multiple years, and I didn't mind at all, I was perfectly happy by myself.