About Me
My name is Rizwan.
I spent nearly two decades as an engineer in the Canadian oil sands. When I started in 2007, the industry was booming. Oil was north of $100 a barrel. The path ahead felt obvious.
It wasn’t.
Within a decade, the same industry that felt like a safe bet was in structural decline. Climate policy, electric vehicles, a pandemic. The floor shifted fast. I found myself more than ten years deep into a career, looking at the horizon and realizing I had built my professional identity around something quietly becoming obsolete.
That forced the kind of clarity most people only reach when it’s already too late to act on it.
What do I actually want from my work? What am I building toward? If I define success on my own terms instead of the ones handed to me, what does that even look like?
Those questions took time. Honest conversations with myself. A willingness to challenge assumptions I had never examined: about what a career is supposed to mean, what real security actually requires, and who gets to write the rules.
I eventually figured it out. But I did it the hard way, without a guide, mostly by unlearning things I thought I already knew.
Escapetivity exists so you don’t have to do it that way.
Most millennials and Gen Z are navigating the same fog. The old playbook (degree, steady job, work hard, stay loyal, climb the ladder) was written for a different era. Following it today without questioning it is, in my opinion, a serious mistake. The evidence is everywhere if you’re willing to look at it honestly.
This blog is built on one premise: career clarity comes from understanding yourself well enough to stop letting the default path make the decision for you.
No shortcuts. No quick fixes. Just a clear-eyed look at what’s actually going on, and a practical way to think about what to do next.
If you’re done drifting, start with the blog. That’s where the real work happens.