No write, no auto-save, no file history

Premiere Pro began acting strangely a few days ago.

• When I opened premiere pro, the history of recently opened files was blank.
• I tried to open a file that was in the main directory on an internal SSD. The file was made in an older version, so I get the usual prompt to save it as a new file.  However, when trying to save, I get a "You do not have write access to this directory.  Please choose a new location to save the file."  I checked that nothing had changed with the write permissions, and, as expected, nothing had.  I tested from other programs, no problem writing files.  So I created a new subdirectory, and viola, I could save the file.
• Just for fun, I tried saving into the main directory just using the "Save As" menu command, and I can save using the usual method.
• After leaving the program unattended, it went into forever hourglass mode and became unresponsive.  This happens sometimes in Premiere (seems like if I leave the program unattended for long periods of times, it locks up). I usually just restart, open up the most recent autosave (I have it set to 5 minute increments and 20 files max).  However, this time there was no auto-save directory, and no backups, anywhere that I could find (usually this is just in the directory with the project file, and I checked that auto backup is still on in the preferences).
• File history is present again prospectively (e.g. a history of things I have opened up since the initial event are saving properly).

Any thoughts as to what might be going on here? I tried updating to the latest version (12.1.2 build 69) when I discovered the "You do not have write access" message, which did not helped (it seemed to have helped other people in the past).  The crash happened after I updated to the newest version. It was then that I realized auto-save is not working.