Exporting 46 images. It has been about 30 minutes and it's stuck on updating AI settings

Lightroom has become cripplingly slow. I have tried a number of things to no avail. My set-up:

Dell PC xps 8940 

Intel Core i9-10900cpu @2.80 

32g ram 

Intel uhd graphics 630 

Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 super 

I keep my photos on an external WD drive. It's 5 Tb. I use 2.95 and have 1.58 free. 

Things I have already tried:

Created a new catalog 

Reset my preferences

Updated all drivers. 

Tested all the drives/processors I could for any issues. Everything returns as being good. 

I even refreshed my PC and then reinstalled everything. Still nothing. 

I can't help but think that the issue has to do with conflicts between LRC and LR Mobile. I don't have much to base that on other than I have been using a tablet to cull photos and the my system seemed to slow when I did that. It really broke when I tried to import ~1k photos from LR mobile into my old catalog a few weeks ago. I ended up creating that new catalog. It was so bad that that is why I created the new catalog. 

Right now, for example, I'm trying to share photos to my son's soccer team. When exporting, I received an error saying there was an Ai update and I should update the LRC pics before exporting. I'm exporting 46 images. It has been about 30 minutes and it's stuck on updating AI settings. 

Any advice people have would be greatly appreciated.