Lightroom Classic not loading pictures, thumbnails grey and working super slow

Hi everyone, 

my Lightroom Classic (latest Update) has had Problems recently on my m1 max Macbook: 

first, the program didn't open properly, after the initial loading screen the program thumbnail in the bar showed it as open but there was no window to be found. 

then after running virus programs and various other tests to see if my mac is working right, it opened. However very slow and once the window pops up the rest of the program is stuck i.e. the thumbnails and photos don't load. 

I tried yesterday to optimize the catalog but it tried for an hour after which i tried to shut it down making the program stuck. 

now when I open Lightroom it opens with normal speed but then again the thumbnails and pictures don't load and the mouse cursor often turns into that little spinning rainbow showing that something is trying to process. 

I am now dreading to have to reinstall everything and wanted to find help here. Can someone give me some advice or point me in a direction what I can do about this. 

The rest of my Mac works fine however as a sidenote the last weeks that little rainbow cursor appeared also in other Programs which made me kinda pensive if something was off with my macbook. 

I'm also happy if you guys can point me to other threads, I don't have too much time to go through 61k conversations here 😄

Thanks for the help in advance