By skyforbes 
The Gray Morning That Changed Everything
The fluorescent lights hummed their familiar tune above my head as I stared at the computer screen, watching the cursor blink mockingly in the empty email draft. It was 7:43 AM on a dreary Tuesday morning in March, and the coffee in my ceramic mug had already grown cold — much like my enthusiasm for the corporate grind that had consumed the last five years of my life.
Outside my cubicle window, rain streaked down the glass like tears, mirroring the quiet desperation I felt brewing inside my chest. My colleagues shuffled past in their Monday-through-Friday uniforms, their faces carrying that same glazed expression I’d grown to recognize in the bathroom mirror each morning.
That’s when Sarah from accounting leaned over the partition, her eyes sparkling with an excitement I hadn’t seen in our sterile office environment before. “You have to see this,” she whispered, sliding her phone across my desk. On the screen was a TikTok video of a young woman, no older than twenty-five, standing in what looked like a cozy apartment, casually mentioning how her “little side project” was now covering her rent and groceries — and then some.