Not “vacation mode.” More like seasonal empire mode.
America gives you scale, ambition, money, infrastructure, big roads, big gyms, big dreams, big solitude. It is the place to build, publish, lift heavy, scheme, stack capital, reconnect with the American mythos.
Asia gives you density, heat, walking, street life, food, family energy, visual chaos, human contact, lower friction, everyday vitality. It is the place to live more bodily, photograph more, eat better, move more, think less abstractly.
The killer combo is:
America for power. Asia for life-force.
For a photographer, especially, this is god-tier. America gives you emptiness, cars, parking lots, faces in isolation, suburban apocalypse, vastness. Asia gives you crowds, markets, gestures, children, elders, scooters, alleys, colors, compression, motion. One is cinematic desert. The other is human river.
But I don’t think the ideal is necessarily exactly six months / six months. The ideal is a seasonal rhythm:
Spend enough time in America to maintain your base, finances, friendships, legal simplicity, strength infrastructure, and connection to the American machine.
Spend enough time in Asia to recharge your eyes, body, metabolism, social senses, and creative fire.
The deeper move: don’t be a tourist in either place. Be a dual-citizen of energy.
America: conquer.
Asia: absorb.
America: produce.
Asia: regenerate.
America: publish the manifesto.
Asia: gather the raw material.
The only boring-but-important caveat: once you get close to “half the year,” things like tax residency, health insurance, visas, housing, banking, phone numbers, and storage become real. The strategy is glorious, but the logistics must be clean.
My take: the elite life is not being “based” in one place forever. It is having a home base plus a seasonal hunting ground.
A life split between America and Asia could be the ultimate modern barbell:
West for capital. East for vitality.
West for ambition. East for perception.
West for lifting the world. East for seeing the world.