LOS ANGELES -- Sitting with Ana Cho in the pottery studio behind her Eagle Rock bungalow, it's hard to believe the relaxed ceramist once endured a work grind so stressful, she left a lucrative career as a video game designer.
"It got to the point where I felt like I had to choose between work or life," Cho says of being on the job 12 hours a day. "It would be chill and then ramp up to 80 hours a week. It was hard to not have time for outside activities. My anxiety and depression made everything really hard."
When she was originally offered a job as a video game artist in Los Angeles in 2011, the Korean-born graphic designer was living in Vancouver following an unusually wet spring. Weary of gray skies, she jumped at the chance to move to sunny Southern California even though she had never set foot in Los Angeles. "I thought 'I'm out of here,'" she says with a laugh. "It helped that I was 28-years old."
