#genealogy research

so i've been digging through my family's history for years now and i've kinda developed this habit of tracking every single lead no matter how small, even if it's just a remote possibility. like i'll spend hours going down this rabbit hole of census records and newspaper archives just to find one tiny piece of info that might be relevant. is that normal? do other people do this too or am i just crazy? i feel like it's helped me find some really important stuff but at the same time it's also led to a lot of dead ends. anyone else have this problem?

I've been trying to track down a comprehensive regional archive catalog for my 19th-century family research, and I'm getting nowhere. The last archive I visited had a catalog that was so disorganized, it was like they expected me to already know exactly what I was looking for. I spent hours browsing through dusty shelves and digging through outdated indexes, only to find a few scattered records that might have been relevant. It's amazing how some of these archives can be so behind the times when it comes to cataloging and digitization. Has anyone else had a similar experience with regional archives? I'm starting to think that some of these places are more interested in preserving the past than in making it accessible to researchers.