You don’t need to defend yourself to every person who misunderstood you. Some will figure it out later.

Correcting everybody is a full-time job with no wages. A few misunderstandings genuinely matter, usually with people close to you or people who decide something about your life, and those are worth a real conversation. The rest tend to resolve as people watch what you do, or they never resolve, and that turns out to be survivable. Not every wrong impression is an emergency.

Pick the two or three people whose view actually affects your week and talk to them properly. Let the others go for now. If somebody works it out in six months, you can be gracious then.