What Two Lost Souls Means to Jesse Palmer
Two Paths. Two Passions. One Life.
One soul is structured, hardworking, disciplined, and determined. It is the soul that gets up early, shows up, works long and demanding hours, takes responsibility, and provides for my family. It is the part of me that finds purpose in building, solving problems, working with my hands, and being part of something larger than myself.
My career at Chevron has allowed me to experience that side of who I am. I have a passion for the industrial world—the equipment, engineering, tools, cranes, welding, cutting torches, construction, and the complex systems that have to come together for communities and industries to function.
There is something incredibly satisfying about looking at a complicated problem and figuring out how the pieces can work together. Whether I’m working with people, equipment, schedules, systems, or physical structures, I enjoy the challenge of taking something complex and helping bring it together.
But there is another soul within me.
The second soul is less structured. It is creative, imaginative, expressive, instinctive, and artistic. It is the part of me that can stand in front of a blank canvas with nothing but an idea in my mind and begin creating.
Drawing and sketching have always given me another way to communicate what I see and feel. Ideas that begin in my imagination gradually take shape through lines, shapes, movement, and color. After hours of creating, watching an image emerge on a blank canvas is an experience that is deeply gratifying to me.
For me, these two sides of my life are not opposites.
“As the artist and creator of Two Lost Souls, I feel as though I have lived two different paths in my life—or, as I see it, two lost souls.”
The Two Lost Souls Movement
Two Lost Souls was born from this duality.
It is for anyone who has ever felt pulled between different passions, responsibilities, careers, dreams, or versions of themselves.
It is for the person who works the day job but creates at night.
It is for the engineer who paints.
The contractor who writes.
The parent who builds a career while pursuing a lifelong creative dream.
The professional who still feels the pull of something they have loved since childhood.
The person who has learned that being successful in one part of life doesn’t mean giving up another part of who they are.
Two Lost Souls is an anthem for those of us who carry more than one passion within us.
Our lives don’t always follow a straight line. Sometimes we take different paths. Sometimes we become lost along the way. Sometimes we discover that the things we thought were separate parts of our lives are actually pieces of the same story.
Two Souls. One Journey.
Through Two Lost Souls, I want to celebrate the idea that we don’t have to choose just one version of ourselves.
We can work hard and dream.
We can build and create.
We can provide for the people we love and still make time for the things that inspire us.
We can live in a world of structure and still make room for imagination.
Two Lost Souls is my story.
But it doesn’t belong only to me.
It belongs to anyone who has ever felt that there were two different sides of themselves searching for a place in the same life.
So I leave you with the question that inspired the movement:
What are your Two Lost Souls?
— Jesse Ryan Palmer
Artist & Creator of Two Lost Souls
