Welcome to the JavaRanch, Conrad!
I'm not sure exactly what you mean. What most people think of as
Tomcat's main "log" file (catalina.out) isn't even a proper log. It's just the redirected stdout/stderr from the JVM that Tomcat is running in. And, incidentally, because it's not a true logfile, it's not recommended for webapps to write to stdout/stderr.
Are you referring to one of the other logs such as the localhost log or the log produced optionally when the request-tracking valve is enabled (access log)?
The secret of how to be miserable is to constantly expect things are going to happen the way that they are "supposed" to happen.
You can have faith, which carries the understanding that you may be disappointed. Then there's being a willfully-blind idiot, which virtually guarantees it.