make TextEdit open new document by default

This used to happen automatically (as recently as a few months ago), but sometime in the last couple months, things changed so that now when I open TextEdit it assumes I want to open an existing file. Which I never do. Yes, New Document is just one click away, but it bugs me that I have this extra step now. I don't see any way to force it to open a new document by default when opening, but really hope I'm missing some way to do that. Any help?

And yes, this exact question was asked and "answered" in Jan 2020, but that answer was garbage with nothing useful. I close all my textedit docs before quitting textedit, the "change preferences" is a bunch of useless check boxes that don't pertain to this issue.

I want one click "new doc" back on my textedit, please.

MacPro (intel) running Monterey