A bridge too far.

I've been noticing lately some strange reactions from people when I start mentioning my intensive work on the one ancient language that I've been working on intensively for the past number of years now.

Some people think it's great, or they think it's funny how I've really gotten into that even though it's not the explicit subject of my graduate study ( = reaction of a [woman] I know from college), or they compliment me and say I'm a "polymath" ( = reaction of a [woman] I know from the past and from graduate school and who's now in a tenure-track job in a pretty different field, who's asked me smart questions about why I think the field is underdeveloped).

Other people, however, just balk, probably since it's too weird, like they don't even want to talk with me about it, and they start looking at me suspiciously.

It's like "a bridge too far," in my past decade-plus of roaming around like a velociraptor in Jurassic Park and tinking at fences looking for a weakness where I can burst through.

It's like they think there's something wrong with me for not having turned anything I've worked on into anything recognizable where I can "level up" to a profession or a decently-recognized achievement, and now they're blaming me and acting like it's some erratic fault of mine, as if I just flightily dip into everything I do rather than sound it out and sink huge amounts of time and energy into various directions.