Hi all.
It’s been awhile since I’ve made a post (nearly a year), but since some of my posts have recently received positive feedback, I thought I’d take up blogging again.
Over the past seven months or so I had basically dropped chess. I have volunteer work at my church, which was taking up the majority of my time (not that I object), and school was taking up the other end. So my focus really wasn’t on the sixty-four squares. Thus my standard FICS rating dropped from around 1650 to 1570. However, more recently, I think I’ve been breaking through a thick barrier.
I have been able to get exposed to a lot more pursuits, namely my volunteer work at church for the children’s worship team. This has been pretty surreal, since I only a few years ago graduated from the children’s classes myself. It’s a very interesting experience to see it from the other side. The opportunity is well appreciated, and it has been an honor to serve God through my singing. I believe it is God’s will that this be one of the biggest aspects of my life, priority-wise.
I have been doing a lot more in the way of chess as well. I have been trying to work out an hour of tactics puzzles every day from Monday to Friday and have regrouped with Thomas Katsampes to have lessons every two weeks. With this, I built a solid and consistent opening repertoire (which I will not reveal here, since the reader may be my next opponent 
) that has won me several games on FICS. My play has improved, and I brought my rating back up to 1599. Let’s hope this time I really have made a breakthrough and will get to 1800 shortly.
With all this, I have some new ideas for the blog, one being to set up a “cafe” of sorts, in which all the dedicated readers (although there is no specific classification) can not only post feedback, but also chat with each other. Let me know what you all think of this. I am considering changing the template of the site in hopes that I can organize it better and give it a slightly different feel. This will probably happen immediately, so I am open to feedback on that as well.
That concludes my update. I aim to fill up the site with more posts in the future. Hope you all are having a great season. Thanks for taking the time to read my rambling.
