Opened Drawing "Locked"

Has anyone experienced an issue where every drawing that you first open is in a state where nothing on the drawing can be "selected" (almost as if it is one block, except that you can't select the clock either).

The way I found to "get around" this is to just draw a short line somewhere. For some reason running this command "unlocks" things and now the drawing is normal. Individual items can be selected.

It's just a really annoying thing to have to draw a line, then erase it EVERY TIME I open a drawing.

Oh, and the same drawings that I'm working with can be transported to another laptop running the same SW (2018 SP2.1) and this issue is NOT there. They open normally.

I'm baffled! HELP!