About

Three companies. Three different reasons. The same result: someone else deciding he didn't belong.

The first time, he came back from four months away to find his job already gone, quietly taken by someone who'd been asked to hold the door open for him instead. No warning. No conversation. Gone, on the first day back.

The second time, he was forty-four, six months into a new job, when "restructuring" took his name off the list. Getting laid off never gets easier. At forty-four, it starts to feel like a verdict on you personally, even when it isn't.

The third time was the strangest, because nothing was wrong. Three years of work his bosses had no complaints about, nothing he'd have done differently. Laid off anyway, because the business needed a number, not because of who he was.

Twenty years as a graphic designer. Twelve workplaces. Three layoffs, for three unrelated reasons, none of them a verdict on his actual work.

Vitals in Black started the moment he decided that was the last time someone else would get to decide.

A symbol first. Then a garment. Then a language, for the version of himself that was still figuring out how to leave.

That's who VIB is for.

Not people who've always felt like outsiders. People quietly stepping out of a system that stopped fitting. People rebuilding, not raging.

Discipline here isn't a claim already earned. It's the thing being built, one day at a time, by someone still in the process himself.

The story is ongoing. Every new chapter becomes part of the mythology.