Being taken seriously conflicting with being myself

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The reason I started attuning my behaviour to people/groups I was interacting with at that moment was to be taken seriously for a change. Since being myself conflicts with that a lot.

The thing is, it's wearing me out.
If it's up to me I'd talk very direct but that's something that few can seem to take, so I act anything from very direct to very indirect to get people to not see me as a madman.

Can any of you relate to this?
Found a way to solve this issue in everyday life?

I stick to the same scripts and tend to rely on basic rules of politness such as smiling, opening doors for people and so on.

I don't:

Comment directly on peoples appearance, habits, lives etc unless I want to make a genuine compliment. Even if I just have an observation I err on the side of caution and don't say it. I stick to works like nice, good, excellent and attractive if I have to comment.
Indulge in social activity for longer than I have to.

The only exception to commenting on other peoples way of being is if I am frustrated about something (such as lack of understanding) and need to vent. In those instances I am merely attempting to communicate my own feelings and mean no harm by it. I tend to avoid gossip, office bitching etc as I do not like nastiness just for the sake of nastiness. It is not nice. I tend to say nothing in conversations like those if I must be forced to listen to them.

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I tend to let other people do most of the talking but this gets hard for me as I am wary these days about talking about my interests too much so I find it better to say not much of anything at all, rather than say the wrong thing. I do have problems with zoning out during conversations because I am not really interested in the subject and it can be hard work for me. I have learnt to smile and nod a lot, which works well unless I smile and nod in the wrong place lol. Then people ask me what the hell I am grinning at.

Basically I almost mute myself and my personality when interacting in the real world. Better not to do or say too much as opposed to having people screaming right in your face accusing you being deliberately difficult because you did and said the wrong thing again.

Online my personality surfaces more and I am uber chatty, tend to ramble on and on and on lol but that pisses people off on most forms as well so it does not work or go down well either.

I have actually decided that socialising is not for me. I will interact with people and I will try to be polite and considerate where I can be but I can't be anything other than myself, it is too exhausting. Neither muting myself or being myself actually works well when it comes to successfuly socialising anyway so I may as well just be my natural self and save myself a lot of energy.

Soooo much.

In my mind, there's always this balance that I have to maintain.

And it really does boild down to how much I want to be a part of the real world and how much I want to live in my own mind.

I was ALL THE WAY in my own mind for much of 2011 and it got dangerous, I was doing nothing productive and lost touch with everyone I know.

So now, I'm back in touch with people( at least to an extent that makes me seem/feel more normal) and am attending school but I still struggle with that all the time..

I just have zero interest in people that I don't REALLY like. And I do REALLY like some people but hanging out with people that I'm not that into vs. being in my own world and doing my thing is a tough decision, I usually always end up choosing to do my own thing as much as possible.

Exatly. My reputation as a class clown has taken me nowhere.

This kind of thing is so exhausting. I have given up on it to be my normal self at all times.