Welcome, Reader!
I’m Steve Skojec, and this is your starter guide to my Substack, The Skojec File.
Here at TSF, you’ll find an eclectic mix of topics: cultural commentary, lots of personal reflections and essays, some religious analysis and deconstruction, disruptive innovation in science and technology (especially AI), and a smattering of posts about the wild and weird world of UAPs (formerly known as UFOs) and the unexplained.
I can’t stop trying to figure out what makes the world tick — and more importantly, what our place is and how to manage all of this madness. I believe that beauty, truth, and goodness are our greatest pursuits.
The world is full of wonders and mysteries, heroes and heartbreak. We are navigating one of the biggest moments of change in human history, and a lot of thematic ingredients go into that mix. I am, for whatever reason, a human pattern recognition engine, and I chase the themes that feel important wherever they take me.
That’s the secret sauce that goes into all the writing you’ll find here.
If you’re interested in exploring some of the primary themes I explore, the following are a handful of popular posts from across the broad range of topics I write about.
A deeply personal essay in my signature style:
For Us, There is Only the Trying. The Rest is Not Our Business.
“There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”
Self-actualization and development in the midst of suffering:
Religious deconstruction is a messy business:
Technology is re-shaping our world. Can we stay human?
In 2025, my wife decided that our 22-year marriage, which had produced 7 children, was over. I was asked to leave against my will. To keep from losing my mind, I went on a road trip spanning several months, visited old friends, had new adventures, and wrote from the road. This is an early entry in a series of travel essays about my attempts to process my grief while in exile:
The title says a lot. This essay says the rest:
Everyone is Going Through Something
The image at the top of this post comes from the artist Luca Ponsato, and I find that I keep bumping into it in my travels online.
There are hundreds of posts that don’t appear in this short list. You can browse the archives by latest posts or most popular, search using the magnifying glass at the top of the page, or click on any of these super-secret tag links that for some inexplicable reason don’t show up anywhere in user-facing areas of the website. These are our primary main categories of content, in no particular order:
Notes From the Road - I write about every day experiences in a way that seeks beauty, insight, and unexpected meaning. This is the good stuff.
Postcards From Exile - Travel writing from the the road trip I took just after my involuntary separation from my wife and kids, when I was trying to figure out what it all meant. Some of my most personal work to date.
Cultural Commentary - Discussions about cultural shifts & current events
Personal Reflections - Personal essays on various topics, drawing from direct experience and typically written from a first person POV
Religion - I no longer practice it in any organized way, but I still think and write about it a lot
Personal Growth - Different than personal reflections; stuff I’ve learned about navigating trauma, neurodivergence, and life in general that might be helpful to others
UAPs & Unexplained - Anything particularly weird or woo or involving news about our visitors from somewhere else
AI & Tech - We are in the most rapid acceleration of technological advancement in human history, and it affects all of us
Podcasts & Media - This is where I link to any podcast appearances, including those on Monitoring the Situation, of which I am the co-host.
That’s it for me. If you have any questions, or would just like to reach out, you can contact me right here.