I have to do that every time to be able to do anything.
For example when speaking with an NPC their chat dialogue shows in the log and then it opens a menu for how to interact with the NPC. However in my case because the log is active from my talking to the npc the menu doesn't show. And if I hit esc it stops talking to the NPC first then started closing the log.
Here is a quick youtube video I just made kind of showing it. You can see when the log is not open I can open menus but when the log is up from my interaction with Harara it doesn't open the menu. There is a quick flash like it's trying to but then just closes immediately.
https://youtu.be/Pkr_qMoT5WE