My Zayde — grandfather in Yiddish — and his father came to the United States after the Holocaust. In the concentration camps they survived in part because they repaired the timepieces of the Nazi guards.

Their skill with their hands kept them alive.

Years later in America, my grandfather continued repairing watches well into his nineties. His hands were calloused but incredibly precise. People would bring him family heirlooms — watches that held generations of stories — and he would patiently restore them.

Meanwhile, two generations later, I spend most of my days writing computer code that may not even exist a few years from now.

My back aches from bad posture, not from honest work.

And I find myself craving something different.

I think many people in my generation are asking similar questions.

For years we were told to pursue knowledge work — to sit behind computers and build digital things. But increasingly, that work can feel abstract and detached from the physical world.

At the same time, people are craving something more tangible. Something real.

Every major technological era seems to produce a counter-movement — a return to the human, the handmade, the artisanal.

I believe we're entering one of those moments.