I'm using jira-python to automate a bunch of tasks in Jira. One thing that I find weird is that jira-python takes a long time to run. It seems like it's loading or something before sending the requests. I'm new to python, so I'm a little confused as to what's actually going on. Before finding jira-python, I was sending requests to the Jira REST API using the requests library, and it was blazing fast (and still is, if I compare the two). Whenever I run the scripts that use jira-python, there's a good 15 second delay while 'loading' the library, and sometimes also a good 10-15 second delay sending each request. 
Is there something I'm missing with python that could be causing this issue? Anyway to keep a python script running as a service so it doesn't need to 'load'  the library each time it's ran?
@ThePavoIC, you seem to be correct. I notice MASSIVE changes in speed if Jira has been restarted and re-indexed recently. Scripts that would take a couple minutes to run would complete in seconds. Basically, you need to make sure Jira is tuned for performance and keep your indexes up to date.
Jira python runs very slowly, any ideas on why?