This is a toast to the charcoal-fingernailed figure-drawing artist and the tech-app-builder fumbling through betas to find elegant simplicity. This is a tribute to the transmission tinkerer with nicked-up thumbs and the photographer clicking her shutter to the rhythm of the creek’s current at sunset.

For the cowlick-haired little guy carefully crafting toothpick-play-doh porcupines and the pigtail girl floating through the living room in a laundry basket boat.

And for the mama packaging hand-stitched pillows to ship, just outside the splash-zone of the blow-up pool.

I’ve met you in the coffee shops, clicking away at your laptops, and at the tattoo studios, freehanding inked masterpieces on breathing canvases.

You’ve rambled the features of the soup du jour, setting my lemon water on the table, secretly daydreaming of hand-hammering metal to jewelry that makes women feel beautiful.

I’ve ordered pencils from your etsy shop, custom-engraved by you, at 3:15 a.m. the day before your kid’s pre-school graduation.

I’ve read your blog, followed your travels to Tanzania, and gushed over the gorgeous handmade totes you carry home.

I bought your adorable felted cake toppers for my wedding and they still sit on the entry shelf in my living room.

I gave your watercolor print to my mother to hang on her beach house wall.

And you know what? Your work inspires her. And me.

You see, you’re putting little pieces of your soul out into the open, to go on and change lives, even in the littlest of ways. Someone cares about what you’re doing, and it doesn’t matter if it’s one person or a hundred million people. By creating, you are connecting.

So raise a cloudy glass of gray paintbrush water and pump your socket wrench clenching fist in the air. This one goes out to you, the makers. You’re changing the damn world.