Thanks for taking the time to respond. Yup, I definitely should have considered my options when I had the chance, instead of transferring everthing. Luckily I was able to find out how to erase and start over. The procedure is a little different for M1 Macs, AND you have to be running AT LEAST 11.0.1, otherwise the erase option won't be available. Here is the procedure, copied from the MacRumors forum where I found it (Post#20)
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/erasing-an-m1-before-return.2272102/
>>>with Mac OS 11.0.1 here are the steps I used to successfully Erase my M1 Mac and reinstall the baseline OS:
1: Shut down your M1 Mac
2: Press and hold the power button down to enter recovery mode
3: Click the "Options" Gear-cog icon and then press the "Continue" button that appears below it
4: On the next screen, STOP. Look to the upper left corner - to the right the Apple Logo in the menu bar, select "Recovery Assistant" (it is the only menu item)
5: In that drop down menu, select "Erase Mac..."
6: Follow the on-screen steps from there
Note - you will need wifi access. From what I can tell, using this process completely reformats the Mac hard drive to a single partition, downloads a fresh copy of Big Sur, creates a new recovery partition and a new OS partition with an OS only install (no Garage Band, iMovie, Pages, Keynote, etc - which you can install later). The process took about an Hour and ten minutes.<<<
I followed these instructions with no problem, and since I also use iCloud, I automatically got all the really important and useful stuff back. I reinstalled all the apps from the App Store that I actually use, and I'll reinstall others as a specific need arises. I still intend to look through my Time Machine backup to see if I'm missing anything that I really (or even sorta) care about. There's probably some silly stuff that I keep dragging forward because I have trouble letting go, but that's an issue to share on a different board/forum😏
