Finder Question

I've owned my mac for a long time. I'm pretty good with it most days, and I'm techy enough to figure most things out.

However, starting yesterday, command+f (which I have always used to open a clean finder window) now defaults to an empty search without my harddrive or folders listed on the left. I can get to the window I want with File-New Finder Window, or even File-New Tab but I'm at a loss as to why it changed, and I use Finder to view files exponentially more often than I use it to search the drive, so it's an extra step now that I can't seem to clear with preferences. I have "New Finder windows show" set to My Macbook Pro, but it still auto opens the blank search. It's a minor issue, but it's driving me insane.

Thanks for your help, and sorry for the n00b question.