not sure how to explain this but the icons within the menu bar are jumping from one to the other. can anyone help

Does this occur in Safe Mode? That boot up takes minutes. Safe Mode disable some items and clears caches and sometimes resolves problems after a normal start.

How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support

Related to you other posting on same issue

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253433956

As a side note I notice with Monterey and my M1 startup time using safe mode is just now seconds (no longer than normal boot time) vs before when it took like forever.