I did the same thing in my early 20s and came to regret it. Especially since I know now that if I'd found the right mentors and/or learned the right things, I c

I did the same thing in my early 20s and came to regret it. Especially since I know now that if I'd found the right mentors and/or learned the right things, I could've made better decisions and gotten much more accomplished in less time. You live and you learn. The identity thing you mentioned is big, too. We can turn ourselves into machines, but it robs us of our personalities. Like anything else, being good at being social requires practice. You get rusty. It also helps to have interesting things to talk about, and work talk gets boring fast. If that's all you have to talk about, you start to wonder what happened to the rest of you, and so does everyone else.