I totally get that.

Check out Textpad. You might like it. The only nuisance with it is the default config settings are a little oddball (things like keyboard shortcuts, etc). But it’s highly configurable so you can set it up the way you like and then it’s good. It has more features than Notepad, but it’s still pretty simple and can do cool things like search files / folders for strings, has regex support, etc. But the extras stay out of your way and it’s pretty clean and simple for “notepad-like” usage.