Pen toll constantly snapping where I don't want it to go

For the last 3 years I cannot get the pen tool to work properly in Illustrator.

I'm using the Creative Cloud and upgrading whenever a new version comes out,

I've dumped preferences, restarted , created brand new documents, etc.

But no matter what I do - the pen tool tries to snap to something.

I click my cursor where I want the point/node to land, and it goes somewhere else.

I've made sure that all the "snap to..." options are turned off in the view menu, but it keeps happening.
I've noticed if I zoom in really close and do it, it works fine. But that's not good enough. This has been buggy for the last 5 or more versions.

Does anyone have any solutions (using iMac 10.14.6 but it's been doing this for the last 3 or 4 OSs')