For some low-stakes practice find an active Discord server that matches some general interest you have, i.e. philosophy, sports, gaming, etc. Try to start and j

For some low-stakes practice find an active Discord server that matches some general interest you have, i.e. philosophy, sports, gaming, etc. Try to start and join conversations to get the cadence and refine your mental model of how conversation goes. Some very active Discords even have voice chats that you can join to get even better. Face to face conversations give you many more signals, i.e. body language, environmental context, etc. so it's like moving from easy, to medium to hard mode. One thing you can do IRL is sincerely smile and ask cashiers and other service workers, "How's your day going?" This is super low stakes because, as long as they're not extremely busy, they are expected to be nice and will generally appreciate that you're treating them like a human.