NetworkManager confused on startup

Somehow I've managed to muck around and invoke NetworkManager in an odd state on startup. I suspect it was during an attempt to configure it to use NordVpn (which I may do in the future, but what I'm after here is an understanding of how to get back to the previous NM behavior).

In any event, upon startup of my preferred DE (xfce), NM now starts up connecting to my usual wifi (which is normal), but also:

• Opens my configured connections,
• Opens my home directory in my file manager,
• Opens a terminal in my ~Downloads directory

Now, I can cancel, or close all those, and things seem to work as normal; but now at every restart, the above behavior returns.

I've configured rc.nordvpn to be non-executable, and have looked around, but have been unable to see any recent changes in configuration files.

Can someone offer me a clue as what I need to do to return to a simpler startup? Also, I'd like to know how/what I did to get in this state.

Thanks in advance.