But I do have a desire to produce great photos that meet my own standards of quality and including people is one of my personal standards.
If you've never tried such a thing, I recommend you try at least once to produce an album that includes a lot of photos interspersed with a good amount of people and portraits. Its definitely more uncomfortable to create such an album but personally, for me it enhances the album much more. Just a recommendation from one introvert to another.
Some public events explicitly provide a role for volunteer photography and policy for that role:
https://volunteer.parkrun.com/principles/photography-policy
Every week there will be a group of people running and jogging and walking around the same 5k parkrun courses. Every week is another opportunity to make pictures from a different position, or make different pictures from the same position, or perfect the same picture.
Or, to say the same thing much less cynically: as an introvert I use photography as a solitary activity in order to recharge - so I naturally gravitate towards people-free locations when I have the camera in hand. None of what you say is false, of course - but when I pick up the camera my goal isn't necessarily to produce the most meaningful or poignant image possible, nor even to produce something that necessarily resonates with anyone else.