Slow response times when placing image from Bridge - Illustrator on macOS 13.6.3

I'm experiencing extremely slow response times when placing an image in Ai from Bridge. When I go to Bridge, select an image, and go to File>Place in Illustrator, it takes 20 to 30 minutes before Ai becomes responsive again. Placing the same image from the CC Library or from within Ai (using File>Place) is normal. Here's what happens... Mac OS I have Ai running on a separate workspace as Bridge In Bridge I select the asset and go to File>Place in Illustrator The Ai icon bounces and I hear an error ping from the OS. Some Ai tool bars and paletts appear on the Bridge workspace screen, but the OS does not switch workspaces. I manually switch to the Ai workspace and the graphic appears on screen with a bounding box but Ai stopps responding for about 20 minutes or more. The system itself continues to respond. I can switch workspaces or launch and use other apps. Mac OS Ventura 13.6.3 4.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel i7 Radeon Pro 580 8 GB 32 GB 2400 MHz DDR4 3.12TB internal drive with only 130 GB available (could this be the problem?) P.S. I know CC Libraries are the way to go now, but I'm moving away from using Libraries since they count against my CC storage, and I've found that they are not as reliable when editing or updating an asset. They also take up more hard drive space since most of the assets in my libraries are also in other folders. I'm going back to the old-school workflow using Bridge to manage local graphic assets and images.