I love the new notepad, it's a huge upgrade. Though I tend to use VSCode anyway.
The default in the new Notepad that drives me nuts is its insistence to keep what I had there before. Notepad on every launch for me is a clean slate, a bin to hold copy / pasted text. The option to fix this behavior is under the same gear, at the bottom "When Notepad starts". By default it's "Open content from the previous session", the alternative of "open a new window" suites my workflow better.
Another case of "we don't care what you want we are going to force this on you"...sigh...
Everyone should take a step back and think about this statement for a moment.
Software changes, features get added, the future rolls on. Just because a thing has been a certain way for a period of time doesn't mean it will be so forever. Microsoft didn't add additional features to Notepad to annoy people, they did it because they recognized the tool had been outgrown, and the sought to increase its value. The new Notepad has been rather critically well received in most online communities. It's OK to not like it, but thinking Microsoft is "forcing" things is a bit over the top. They are doing what they were paid to do, improve and maintain their OS. You're free to not like the decisions made, and we have configuration options to deal with these concerns. But we're in IT, keeping up with these changes is literally our job and complaining about it in these terms isn't terribly productive. Cathartic? Certainly... and I'm just as guilty of this behavior so don't think I'm not preaching to myself too.
Just relax, figure out how to fix it so you can use it, find another tool that fits your workflow better, and log all that away so you can support your clients and yourselves better. It's what we do.