I find tailing the log file a pain in the tail! 
But on the occasions when I do want to see the output, eg after a reinstall, I find node-red does the job.
I almost always use sudo systemctl restart nodered.
But if you search through this forum you can find many examples of people saying they ran node-red start
If as a beginner you do run node-red start you get an empty editor, no sign that you made a mistake. If you deploy it creates a flowfile called start (not start.json) and now you must always use node-red start to see your flows.
Perhaps the node-red script would be better if it accepted a flag -f flowfilename and to avoid breaking changes, a warning if a parameter was used as the flow file name without this flag?
ps See this thread for an example of mutual misunderstandings around the start-up command
