I am an introvert. Many people (including many introverts) thinks this means you don't like people or social gatherings. That's not the case. Or at least it's not necessarily true.

Here's the best way I can describe it: being an introvert means that social interactions cost you energy. Being an extrovert (since I'm not one) seems to mean that social interactions gain you energy.

I see this in a relative of mine who is clearly an extrovert. Social interactions are her drug. She craves them and gets almost like a high from them and honestly gets really hyper as a result.

Compare this to me. At work I've had these extended work gatherings for several days where it's a lot of team-building, brainstorming and so on. By the end of the day I'm physically exhausted from all these interactions. Some people are not. Some will go to dinner in the evenings then out to a bar to drink and then back to someone's Airbnb for another gathering after that. That's all fine for them but it's just way too much for me.

So it's not like I don't like interacting with these people. It's merely a question of how much mental energy I'm capable of expending before I need to recharge.

So you see these differences really exposed by the forced isolation. I miss some of the interaction (and, to be fair, the food) of being in the office but otherwise I'm fine. You can clearly see that other people are not. While I have a natural excuse to avoid many draining activities, others are clearly being denied their recharging activities.

So yeah, I can totally buy neural cravings here. For some.