It is for me too, but in the end, practice made it so much easier. It took years and some guidance from a therapist, but it worked. “I want to meet more people” was one of those problems that took me year to properly work on.

I think that the core problem was similar: I was willing to make an effort, but did not have a clear idea of how to do it.

Well, happy it worked for you.

For me, I've taught myself to socialize, but it takes lots of masking to do so, which means lots of energy, and failures are pretty hard on me.

One thing that helped me a lot was practicing in low-stakes situations. I started chatting up Uber drivers pretty consistently and learned a lot about just letting go in the moment. I was using rideshare for all my travel at the time, before the pan made me realize how vulnerable I was without a car. I don't get that practice anymore because taking Uber is much less frequent and I let the habit ossify.

I had unexpected amounts of fun at long multi-day raves. You get into altered mental states (even without substances) and don't have to talk to people but also you can.

Right, trying and failing at socializing is not fun at all.