I think you're taking that part about being yourself a bit too literally. It is completely possible to be socially adept (refraining from making dead baby jokes

I think you're taking that part about being yourself a bit too literally. It is completely possible to be socially adept (refraining from making dead baby jokes around new mothers, not picking your nose in public, saying "please" and "thank you") and still manage to do things you enjoy at home or as a career. Perhaps catfish farming is your true passion, and people all your life have been giving you weird looks if they were strangers, or trying to push you into a safer occupation like lawyering if they were friends, but your will to raise catfish commercially won. (Po Bronson actually writes about a catfish farmer in his book "What Should I Do With My Life?", I believe.) That's an example of being yourself and still leaving plenty of room to be socially adept. Though, with that slightly contrived example concluded, there are times when really being yourself and being socially acceptable aren't compatible. (Being a woman a few hundred years ago who liked math, being black in the South a few decades ago, etc). But being socially adept would not have saved you there. I think we're fortunate in that the trajectory seems to be going in the direction that we need make such compromises less and less.