Taking Off

Although the project is a large biographical account of my time studying abroad, I think it's only worth sharing some of the spreads of the journal and my foreword from London. I hope you enjoy these brief moments from my life. If you ever want to check out the rest of the project, you're welcome to check it out any time in person, cheers!

To London, A Foreward

For most of my life, the car has been the center of how we as a society go about our daily lives. From some of the most intimate moments with my close friends, to forging new relationships with others, the car was the common denominator between those memories. In high school, my car was the center of my life, bridging together experiences that would have been impossible to accomplish without it. Every sixth-period Disha, Anika, Shashank and I would cut class to go eat out, which became some of the foundational moments of our growing friendship during junior and senior year. My first girlfriend and I spent almost half of our relationship in the car, sharing all of our firsts, and most of the dates we went on. I remember one of my favorite dates I went on was during Christmas break, we drove up to University Avenue to watch the lights twinkle around the trees, and just embraced the warmth watching the people walk by. We were in our own little universe, isolated and protected by the comfortability of the car. It was beautiful and comforting.

Fast forward to college, Los Angeles transformed the purpose of the car entirely. It wasn't this dreamy symbol of freedom anymore, it became something more functional, more rooted in necessity than desire. I wasn't driving around to feel something, I was driving around because I had to. The car turned into my lifeline to the rest of the city. If you didn't have a car, it wasn't just an inconvenience, it meant whole parts of LA were off-limits. The beach, the hills, the late-night food spots that weren't on your street, everything worth exploring required wheels.

But the thing about cars, the thing I didn't really notice until they weren't part of my everyday life anymore, is how cut off they make you. I think I always associated them with comfort, with convenience, with safety. But no one tells you about the quiet kind of loneliness that comes with being in a car. It's just you, the people you choose to bring with you, and the world outside moving in fast-forward. You're watching everything pass through a pane of glass, disconnected from the noise and mess and aliveness of the city around you. The world becomes something you observe, not something you're immersed in.

In a way, the car kept me sealed in a version of life that was curated, controlled. If you didn't want to deal with people, you didn't have to. If you wanted to leave a place, you could leave instantly. That kind of freedom is powerful, but it's also kind of empty. London is where all of that changed.

For the first time in my life, I got to enjoy the beautiful little moments of not depending on any sort of enclosed transportation and it made all of the difference. I found myself walking through Russell Square every day, taking time to just feel the wind on my face, watch the kids at UCL sip on their coffees and go about their days. I got to see people of all walks of life taking the tube, going about their lives exchanging smiles when we caught our eyes. Even though we didn't know each other, or share anything with each other, the presence of other people around me all the time made me feel lighter, and more content with every day. For the first time in forever, the journey to get somewhere was exciting, and didn't deter me at all.

And with that shift came something unexpected: I found my way back to old loves like reading. Hobbies that had faded into the background came back to life. Instead of tuning out on long drives, I was tuning in, losing myself in voices and stories, each offering a window into someone else's world. That feeling, that sense of rediscovery, it stuck with me, even after I had left London.

That reconnection to books, to curiosity, to things that made me feel like me, wasn't just about having more time. It was about the way the city moved. The way I moved. For the first time, I wasn't speeding past everything. I was walking through it, absorbing it. That change in pace shifted something deeper.

I used to think movement had to be fast. That freedom meant getting from point A to B on my own terms, with as few interruptions as possible. But London taught me the opposite, that there's a quiet power in slowness, in not rushing, in sharing space with people you don't know. There was something grounding about being part of the city's current, of walking alongside strangers, waiting together on crowded platforms, or brushing past each other on narrow sidewalks. It made me feel like I was part of something bigger, like life was unfolding all around me and I finally had the chance to witness it, not just pass through it. Movement stopped being about escape and started being about presence. I wasn't trying to get away anymore, I was learning how to stay.

Selected Spreads