Yeah, it's difficult to pinpoint FI. In my case, I technically have the option to use property managers and be completely hands off and still cover my low expenses. And that's where I land in my own personal definition of FI: you have the option for your income to be completely passive. But, like many folks here, I enjoy managing my projects, and it earns me more money, and I'm happy with my current level of freedom / work, so I choose to be more hands-on about it. I guess that would be similar to people who choose to be very active in the stock market, but could just be letting things ride in index funds.
Thanks for the thumbs-up in regard to posting here. My friend suggested that I should bullet-point the story in the forum, and then just provide a link at the bottom, that way it would give people the option to leave the forum only if they had further interest. Perhaps I'll modify the post soon. [EDIT: I did this.]