This is the result of Eth having it's own bull run that's why the gas price is really peaking as well. I also remember that there is a record high of Eth wallets in the last couple of days, so for sure it added to this whole "mess" of clogging the network and then we have the Defi hype, Eth 2.0 on the horizon.
Maybe this thread can help you out:
https://ethgasstation.info/If you don't want to pay high gas fees, then maybe you need to wait a little bit and see when it settles down.
waiting or lowering the GAS by a smaller amount would not hamper the transaction. I have experienced it when I didn't check the GAS that was active and used the old settings. the transaction was held very long and it was very boring.