Who are you, and what do you do? What do you like to do outside of work?

I’m Shay, and I’m an artist, writer, and dreamer. I work in my family’s small business during the day, and at night I’m either gaming, drawing, or creating stories that I hope to someday unleash unto the world. I moderate a few Discord servers and I’ve recently picked up crochet. A couple of my most favorite games are Deep Rock Galactic, Overwatch 2, Valheim, and recently, Palia.

What hardware do you use?

My bedroom is my safe haven, so everything is shoved into a corner of it—literally. I’ve got an L-shaped desk that helps me store my collection of plushies and holds everything I need comfortably. I have a trusty pair of Sennheiser PC38X headphones and a 28” monitor, and my iPad is always at the ready for me to draw. I don’t do anything that requires a beefy computer except for gaming, so I’m content with what I have.

And what software?

I focus on digital art, so I use Procreate, but there are times when I go to Clip Studio Paint on my display tablet, if I have it plugged in. I use Google Docs a lot for one-shot stories, but I take a lot of notes on paper—I don’t collect notebooks, but I have quite a few!

What’s your keyboard setup like? Do you use a custom layout or custom keycaps?

I’m one of those people who loves to have an “aesthetic,” so my keyboard and desk mat need to match! My keycap set needs to match my lovely desk mat, after all.

Let’s be real, the copy/paste hotkeys were super handy for writing this.

What would be your dream setup?

I’d love to have two monitors, and I’m slowly upgrading my desktop. I’ve only recently gotten into customizing my PC and I’m so happy to say I haven’t fried my computer on the two occasions I’ve opened it up to upgrade its RAM and storage! Upgrading my GPU and CPU will be coming up eventually! I hope to have a big vinyl collection soon too, I started collecting a few and I’m enjoying owning music physically. My dream setup is recreational—by no means am I a programmer or developer, but my love for life comes from what I can do in my free time. I mostly just hope that I’ll have a lot more room in the future, both for me and my cats!