I have been giving most of my attention to ancient history, but in my overall development scheme, I have decided to return to recent and current events.

New Year’s Day is often a time for a fresh start. In my Knowledge Base, it signals not only a new month, quarter, and year, but a new 5 year period, and a new 20 year period. I have so far considered the early 21st century (2001 to 2020) as part of the 20th century, but the early mid 21st century is beginning, which is my signal to begin considering the 21st century in its own right, separate from the 20th.

For the early 21st century, I have a summary of current major world leaders, but have not yet identified the most important events, and need to look more closely at the periods. The late 2010s, including the last 5 years, are in a similar state.

I want to examine the United States more closely, but I am still lacking summaries of the most recent events in sufficient detail. More detailed analysis of social changes and types is still lacking. Although most attention is given in my news summaries to political events, I am trying to give more weight to religion.

For entertainment purposes in the past few months, I have been reading a mixture of fantasy and romantic suspense. I intend to slow down and work on my own fiction.

For gaming, I was playing The Sims 4 for a while but have switched to Elite: Dangerous, and have an exploration and development program in progress.

I have recently watched “The Queen’s Gambit” on Netflix. This has become one of my personal favorites. As the director and leading actress both observed, this is not so much about chess as it is a human struggle. I do play chess and have competed in a few tournaments, and followed it for a number of years. I am no Beth Harmon or any other chess prodigy, although I am still trying to improve my game. I don’t have issues of being an orphan or of alcohol or drug abuse, but I do have my own personal issues which have led me to recognize the kind of obsession and isolation that she struggles with in the series.

For various reasons, I am resuming a program of personal organization that I began last year and more and more or less gave up on. I’m starting to review it and pick it back up again.