Start Here – Welcome to The Skojec File!
Welcome, Reader!
My name is Steve Skojec, and I am the writer-in-residence at this little Substack known as The Skojec File (TSF).
They say that when it comes to online content, the “riches are in the niches,” but I’ve never fit neatly into any single category. I have a chaotic, pattern-chasing brain, and my writing is reflective of that.
More than anything, I am a seeker of meaning, even in the mundane, and I write about things I hope will be deeply resonant with my audience.
Here at TSF, you’ll find an eclectic mis 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.
An example of my personal essay writing in what I consider my signature style:
I’m a cultural commentator by trade, I suppose you could say. I made a living writing about religion and politics for many years. These days, I only veer in that direction when I feel like there’s something very important to say. Like this:
I’ve been obsessed with science fiction and UFOs since I was a kid. Sometimes I write about them here:
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:
Since I was formerly well-known as a Catholic commentator, I wrote this in the hopes of giving a basic explainer to people who ask why I left:
This is it, the most popular post of all time on this Substack. It’s also one of the ones I can’t even force myself to go back and read. It is, in a sense, the origin story for this publication, and it traces the fault lines from the time my faith in Catholicism, which was already cracking at the time, began to shatter:
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:
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 don’t still 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
Travel - My writings from and about various places that I’ve gone, and the things I discovered while I was there
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.