Beware motivated reasoning. There's a large risk that you have noticed that something is harder for you than it seems for others, and instead of taking that as evidence that you should find another avenue to contribute, you convince yourself that you can take the same path but do the hard part later ( and maybe never ).

But you may be on to something real - it's possible that the math approach is flawed, and some less-formal modeling (or other domain of formality) can make good progress. If your goal is to learn and try stuff for your own amusement, pursuing that seems promising. If your goals include getting respect (and/or payment) from current researchers, you're probably stuck doing things their way, at least until you establish yourself.