Having Problems Running things on Catalina

That is not good. Lets first try restarting in Safe Mode per the instructions in Safe Mode Reset and then restart normally and re-test.

If you still have a problem, please do the following:

Please navigate to www.Etrecheck.com and download the free version of EtreCheck. Once you have you downloaded the app and installed it, please run the report and save it. This report will help us get a good idea what has been installed on your system and help us be able to diagnose what may be wrong.

When you have your report, you can attach it when you reply to this message and we can then review it and help you determine what is needed to get your system running well again.

For instructions on how to download your EtreCheck report and attach it to your reply to this message please click https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-250000211

Your Mac is a total mess based on what you have installed on it. Please read and do the following:

The best antivirus, cleaning app, and overall maintenance app for Mac OS is Mac OS itself. All you need to do with Mac OS to keep it secure and running well is to keep it up-to-date and do periodic (about 1x per week) restarts. Other than that, leave it alone. Adding third party antivirus, cleaning, security and other types of maintenance apps to Mac OS adds no additional level of security. The only thing these apps do is have the opposite affect users want. They make Mac OS slow, unstable, generate odd behavior (much like you are experiencing) and make Mac OS appear buggy.

Please locate the developers uninstall instructions for Sophos and follow to the letter. Then restart in Safe Mode per the directions in Use safe mode to isolate issues with your Mac  and then restart normally.

Next, download MalwareBytes and run it, your computer has adware installed on it!

Finally, Adobe Flash should be uninstalled per Adobe's website, it is obsolete and no longer has any need or value to you.

Good luck.

Some additional food for thought: unless you're using a true VPN tunnel, such as between you and your employer, school or bank's servers, they are useless from a privacy standpoint.  Read these two articles: Public VPN's are anything but private and Former Malware Distributor Kape Technologies Now Owns ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, Private Internet Access, Zenmate, and a Collection of VPN “Review” Websites. 

That being said one of the most respected contributors to these forums and a respected developer has said good things about NordVPN.  So it may be more secure than most of the other public VPNs.

General speaking, unless required by your employer, school or bank, VPNs are pretty much useless from a privacy standpoint. And they can interfere with some communications.

Look in the Mac App store for updates to Pages and Keynote, those are free and easy to update. You may have had a very old version of Office for Mac that simply will not run on Catalina (you can thank Microsoft for that) and that should be updated anyhow. Please either subscribe to Office 365 (advantage is you never have to update ever again) or buy Office for Mac 2021 which I believe was just recently released.