Written by Yoo
Sometime in 2015 I sat at a coffee shop in Jersey City, NJ with some friends of mine. One of them was a director of human resources in a big fashion company and was experienced in guiding others in their career choices. I poured my heart out to my friend wanting his opinion. What came out of that meeting is clear, I needed to do something else. Having been designing clothing for over 20 years, I needed a new challenge. I wasn't learning or growing and participating in something my heart wasn't completely in left me feeling shallow. After becoming a parent, I couldn't fathom wearing the kind of 'dry-clean-only' clothes I was designing. Wearing silk chiffon dresses and coming home to my dogs and child who upon arrival would shred my dress with their nails was both funny and an 'ah-ha' moment.
So the search began, what should I do with rest of my life? It was often confusing, scary, frustrating and on rare occasions, exciting to ponder and be so lost. I let myself stay in that confused state for a few years because I knew eventually, I will figure out what I needed to do. Connecting the dots, that's what life is about and I just needed to listen to my inner voice. I exhausted every friendly ear of family and friends that were kind enough to listen and lend their wisdom. Then the name came, mossylist. At the time I came up with the name it was meant for a non-profit recycling company I was planning to start since I wanted to do something more meaningful with my next chapter.
It didn't quite work out but the name stayed with me. Luckily I have very smart lawyer friend, Shinae, who I went to high school with, who always helped me out pro-bono with trademarking my previous companies Saja and Wantington.
Then in 2017, I knew my time in New York was up. I needed to come back to Los Angeles and regroup, breathe, and come up with what I needed to do. So our family migrated back to California. In doing so, I reconnected with my college friend Diana who is an amazingly talented digital creative. Shinae and her family who live in Northern California also came down and stayed with me for the weekend as did Sam and his family from Brooklyn. Sam is a very talented composer friend who worked with my husband Matt for many years.
By September of 2017, it occurred to me that I know so may talented friends who all have these amazing specialty that I lack but together, we can really do something. We all were doting parents, creative, and easy to hang with. I didn't feel alone. I called them up and asked them to help and luckily for me, they all said yes in a heartbeat.
mossylist now had co-founding members in place: utilizing Sam's talent to write the song, Diana's talent to do some CGI magic, Matt's sound design, and Shinae's expertise in trademark, copyright and also in photography. I felt I could create a set, animate it via stop motion (which I knew nothing about) take pictures and link everyone to create original content but also a lifestyle brand.
...And so it began. I gave Sam a lullaby I created when my daughter Sky was born. Not growing up in the United States I didn't know any English lullaby songs. So Sam took that bit of song and came up with "Sun Went Down, Moon Came Up," our first original song for mossylist.
Creating the set began late September and 4 moths later, I was able to build the the full stop animation stage for our song. Diana figured out we needed to animate the video using the Dragonframe software. It wasn't easy to learn, but animating our logo gave me the courage that we could do it. It took 6 months but we've finished the video for "Sun Went Down, Moon Came Up" and are now launching mossylist.
This is just the beginning and I cannot wait to see where mossylist takes us all. For the first time in a long time, I am not confused nor alone. I have my friends as partners going through this journey with me. It's been a long ride to get here, but finding one's passion is worth any bump on the road.