I discovered Ana Goldberg when she was talking about intentional minimalism, about how it is like to consciously own less, and choose better. In that time, she was also dealing with the aftermath of leaving a high paying corporate job, which led her to freelancing gigs and their intricacies. Coincidentally I was also planning to leave my corporate job at that time, and Ana was the voice I needed to hear, to finally make a decision. Yes, I left my job. Suddenly, I had soooo much more time on my hands and a huge need to take a beat and recompose myself, that I just dived with my eyes and ears wide open into all the nice things that YouTube could give me at that time. Ana’s channel was one of them.
Anastasia was born and raised in Siberia. She is a translator, copywriter, marketing specialist, and a beginner art educator. Having to wear so many different hats, for Ana it didn’t necessarily meant that she was hungry for the corporate grind, she was just trying to adapt and keep the course, as all humans learn, very early in life. When she chose to become professionally independent, she found more time to nurture her creative spirit. And YouTube was the perfect platform to let her hobbies and interests bloom and inspire other people.
Ana is an advocate for being creative, and she knows that doing so, people can find better, more authentic versions of themselves. Finding a creative outlet can heal wounded parts of one’s self, therefore living without external limitations.
Now, she lives happily in Serbia, after some years of searching for a safer country, traveling with one suitcase full of only the necessities: a very curated wardrobe and a handful of utensils for all her many hobbies.
I very much suggest you to discover Ana, not just here, but on her YouTube channels. She is truly a breath of fresh air in this quite musty scene of content creators.
Your background
Hi, I’m Anastasia. Born and raised in Western Siberia, Russia. Currently living in Serbia after a few years of nomading back and forth. Having worked in translation, marketing, education, I’ve never been ambitious with my career, things just happened and I adapted.
I’m a teacher and a translator by training and I got into marketing totally accidentally – first as a copywriter, then got promoted to a marketing specialist position in a big advertising company. I still have no idea how it happened, haha.
In 2015, I began to freelance and specialized in marketing localization jobs for big brands such as IKEA, Chanel, L’Oreal. Freelancing makes you hustle like crazy, so around that time I found a few clients from the creative field for whom I worked as a ghost writer, both in English and Russian.
In 2021 as a pure creative experiment, I filmed my first YouTube video… And now I’m a full-time content creator and a beginner art educator.
What drew you to marcom
As I said, it was a mere chance and coincidence: I moved to Moscow from my small Siberian city in 2007 at the age of 25 and was offered a job at a big international market research company (that no longer exists as far as I know).
I worked as an analyst translator. It’s bizarre to think how different things were back then! My job was to summarize newspaper/online mentions of certain brands, identify the tone of voice, make weekly and monthly reports based on the collected and analyzed material. Occasionally I’d work as an interpreter for the company’s higher-ups.
How it felt working in Moscow
Although I had a really good boss and work environment, I couldn’t see myself in marketing for the rest of my life. I really enjoyed the creative part, especially when I got to do more copywriting, but all in all it felt restrictive and rigid for me.
By the time I left my last office job, the social and political climate began to shift in a very scary direction, and I didn’t feel like working with people face-to-face anymore.
Living in different cities
I have very heartwarming memories of Arad and Timisoara and would love to go back sometime in the future. Right now I live in Novi Sad, Serbia, and I do feel like it’s my favorite city where I feel safe and inspired.
This city is small enough to support my love of quiet, calm, and slow living. But at the same time it’s very artistic, kind, and beautiful. And as for a nomadic lifestyle… Well, I don’t miss it! But I would do it again if I really had to.
Minimalism as a lifestyle
I’ve transitioned from forced minimalism to intentional owning less and then back to minimalism out of necessity when my husband and I had to move a lot, trying to figure out our life. I realized that my body is capable of carrying just one big suitcase and one daypack – anything that was above that, made me utterly miserable.
Now that we’re settled in Serbia for at least a couple of years (we never know what can happen), I’m back to intentional minimalism. I’m not a proponent of sterile white-and-beige living spaces – quite on the contrary. I love color, quirkiness, vibrance. Being a multipassionate person, I have my art and crafting supplies that are not minimalist. Yet I keep them under control and avoid getting unnecessary stuff.
Minimalism and philosophy
Minimalism for me is a tool first of all, not an idea or a dogma, or some narrow identity box. It helps see important meanings behind seemingly ordinary things. When our space – mental or physical – is cluttered, it’s hard to find what we need, notice nuances, figure ourselves out. When we have less distractions and more room to breathe, we feel clarity and can explore ourselves more because there’s no more thick layers of unnecessary and unwanted clutter separating our true self from our fantasy self.
Philosophy is all about studying human life on deeper levels. Many people would say that minimalism has a lot of similarities with stoicism. Religious people would find ties connecting minimalism with Buddhism and Christianity. I try to stay away from categorization of this sort – everyone decides for themselves, and if you get inspired to experiment with owning less and treating your possessions more thoughtfully, you don’t need a prominent thinker to tell you exactly how to do it. Let experiment be an experiment – not a lesson.
Minimalism: how to
If I could give just one advice for living intentionally, it would be “Learn to listen to yourself and really hear what you’ve got to say”. It sounds cheesy, yet trust me, so many people don’t actually pay enough attention to THEIR own thoughts, feelings, and dreams. They are too immersed either in other people, or in the external noise: news, social media, gossip, social expectations, etc.
Get to know what kind of person you are, what brings you joy, what saddens you, what makes your heart expand and beat faster. Again, no one can tell you more about yourself than you can. As for books, I would definitely recommend reading Erich Fromm’s “To Have or To Be?”. Minimalism is too small to be a philosophy in itself, yet it is linked to consumerism, inner freedom, creativity, non-conformism, and even spirituality.
A lot of hobbies, but what if you’d pick one?
Ha, my creative hobbies are something I can talk for HOURS, yet I will try to keep it short and sweet. I love working with yarn – both knitting and crocheting, many of my wardrobe items are me-made. It’s another way for me to be intentional with what I wear and how I spend money on clothes.
I also do occasional embroidery – mainly for revamping my clothes, there’re still some jewelry making projects going on from time to time. Recently I’ve revisited macrame and loved it!
My art hobbies include dotwork drawing, urban sketching, art journaling, painting, and collage. I’m not sure if reading and writing can be called a hobby. I just do these daily, they are part of my life. It’s impossible for me to pick just one hobby I can’t live without… But if to choose brutally, I would pick art journaling. It’s something I’ve discovered only a year ago and it has been so transformative for me on every level.
Creative outlets for healing and how to find them
Don’t pick with your brain – use your heart instead. If everyone around knits and crochets and you feel like you have to follow the trend, yet your heart tells you otherwise – listen to it. There are so many online and offline workshops now, so give some of them a try.
One of the best pieces of advice that I’ve heard from someone else was about remembering what you REALLY loved doing/making as a young child. This may seem super simple and primitive, but trust me, it works. Remember what you were excited about before life disappointments came rushing in.
Collaging
I practice a few different collage styles: analog with elements from vintage art books, with added drawn details, more abstract collages using hand-painted papers and a freehand cutting technique. Digital collaging is something that I still enjoy as well.
I don’t want to restrict myself with just one chosen style and hence are all my experiments. Here are some of my all-time favorite collages that capture my art aesthetics pretty accurately.
Starting an YouTube channel: expectations and intentions
It was just a fun experiment, yet another creative outlet. I just wanted to explore videomaking and share my thoughts and experiences with people all over the world. Besides, starting the channel in English instead of my mother tongue allowed me to sort of exceed the boundaries of my personality.
I didn’t have any expectations and that’s why I was quite surprised when the channel took off and grew fast. After about 6 months after the start, from being just a fun hobby the channel has become my lifeline as I was dealing with a big grief: first, from losing my father and then from having to leave my home country.
Planning your content: thoughts, scripts, edits
I have a Word document where I add all video ideas that come to my mind. Sometimes an idea has to wait for several months before I turn it into a video. I don’t plan for more than one month ahead and very often change plans.
Now as I’ve seriously reconsidered my publication schedule, I like to spend more time researching and crafting my essays that I turn into a video narration. Yes, writing comes first and only then – everything else that goes into a video. I research the topic, write an essay, prepare a list of brolls, film the “talking head” part, film brolls if needed or choose from what I already have in my video library, pick music, and put everything together in a video editor.
As a creative I have a very strong opinion about using generative AI – I banned it completely from my creative workflow. I’d rather spend more time and effort developing my own ideas into words and images than outsource the process to a machine.
Not active on social media - a conscious choice?
I honestly tried keeping an Instagram account because I was told that I should. But I so sincerely hated it that finally decided not to torture myself and just focus on what really brings me joy and a sense of fulfilment.
YouTube has changed a lot though and is going in the direction that I don’t necessarily like, but for now I haven’t found any alternative that doesn’t make me feel dead inside, haha.
Dealing with viewership and algorithms
Some topics are appealing to a wider audience and some – just to my core, regular viewers who I perceive as friends, by the way. I’d rather have a cozy circle of people who resonate with me than go viral and get surrounded by a mob of aggressive strangers.
One of my popular videos last year attracted a very toxic male audience and I had to block dudes away every day. Didn’t enjoy that experience.
Also, I think that “crack the algorithm” type of advice is a scam. I had videos with high CTR and record-high retention, yet they stopped being shown by the platform. And I had low-performers that suddenly took off. YouTube is hard work and also unpredictable luck.
Describe your community
My audience, the circle of my online friends, are thoughtful, curious, and creative people with a big heart. I love them! Over the years I’ve connected with many of them deeply and have seen kindness and support that still blows me away.
I hope that with my work I give people back just as much as they give me. And yes, it does feel like a community.
Online persona vs. real life Ana
I don’t like overcomplicating my life and hence I don’t have any online persona whatsoever. In real life I’m probably dorkier and more socially awkward, but that’s it. Honesty and sincerity are among my core values and I find it important to live by them.
But at the same time I can understand creators who do have to build a special online persona. It’s scary to come as you are, to feel vulnerable and fragile. Strangers on the internet can be ruthless, I know it from my own experience. People should do what feels right and safe for them, that’s why having an online persona can be a necessary protective shield.
Starting a second YouTube channel
I am very passionate about art and have reached the point when I can’t keep all my ideas, experiments, and discoveries all to myself. The excitement was overpouring, so I had to find an outlet. I didn’t want to mix two different types of sharing in one bottle, so I decided to start a completely new channel.
It’s a joy to see it grow, expand, and unite like-minded fellow creatives. As for the main channel, I don’t want to abandon it, I still have so many thoughts and experiences to share, but at a much slower pace. Now I publish about once in three weeks and this gives me much more space to breathe, think, and create instead of rushing to craft a new video every week. I do publish every week in my Patreon community, but those videos feel more like friendly tea-time chats – they nourish me creatively.
Future plans with your channels
I plan to continue following my gut and posting videos that I find meaningful and worth watching. I will maintain my quality over quantity principle together with sincerity, honesty, and ethical creativity. YouTube is getting noisier and sloppier, yet I want to stay in the company of my peers who I deeply respect and value. Life has taught me not to make any long-term plans. For now, I’m here – talking, writing, making. And what happens next – we’ll see.
What do you wish for in 2026?
For myself or for all people? I guess, it’s safety – physical, emotional, financial. And also courage to choose and follow our own unique path without feeling intimidated by anything or anyone.
