Nostr is still pretty new so nothing is really "normal" yet.

I don't know for sure, but

I suspect that there are a lot of websocket connections going on behind the scenes and if you have spotty service those connections need to be renegotiated and reopened which is likely what creates a sluggish experience.

And I also suspect that the common default relays the everyone uses are just getting hammered with all the new users and activity.

Consider running your own relay. You can do it for as little as $5/month with digitalocean plus the cost of a domain name.

There are plenty of tutorials online on how to do it