I've reached the 24th page of Google.

It exists.

I recently started at my summer internship with a film company called Susie Films in Charlotte. I get to do a variety of things, but at the moment, as an intern, they've assigned me the task of researching for subject matter for episodes of their TV show, "Handcrafted America." Cool, right?

It is. I go through over 20 pages of Google in one sitting, and then I change my wording in the search bar to start all over. My eyes may start burning and my head is pounding from the hours of staring at the computer screen, carefully scrutinizing each website I come across, but the things I learn about the people of America are fantastic.

But don't get me wrong—I don't enjoy research. I'm just fascinated by the results.

Every day when I come in to work, I'm assigned a city to research. The goal is to create a list of people or small companies that handcraft things in that city. Of course, there are limits to products we can show—no food, no beverages, no tobacco, no clothes (with few exceptions), no beauty or skin care products, no jewelry, and nothing "too artsy." This definitely makes the search a bit difficult, and I learned a neat trick in the meantime...Did you know, when typing into the Google search bar, you can add a "-" in front of a word to eliminate results with that word? So, let's say I'm researching handcrafted things in Little Rock, Arkansas. I would type, "handcrafted little rock Arkansas -jewelry," and I wouldn't have to worry about skimming through all of the results about jewelry. This has saved me so much time!

While doing this research, I've found at least 15 people a day that meet our requirements. I've only had four days of work so far. That means I've found over 60 people in America that handcraft things (excluding items on the list above). 60. That's incredible! I'm lucky I know how to paint a simple painting or put together a kid's puzzle, and yet there are over 60 people out there who handcraft things.

When I say people "handcraft" things, I don't mean they make macaroni art. These people hand make knives, pool tables, sinks, belt buckles, bikes (and all of their individual parts), fireplaces, banisters, guitars, sunglasses, and so much more.

I think it's important to preserve this art form. These artisans are keeping alive a time-old tradition of crafting goods, and nothing on the market compares to that which has been created from someone's own hands.

You'd be surprised what people are capable of making.