Good luck to you . You've made a personal choice and that's fine .
Your reference to ' running around the treadmill ' I find interesting . I would view it as you are still working for a living so I would call that the treadmill . Yes , you may have a job that you love , have a passion for it blah , blah , blah .
When you 're investments pay your wage and you can live pretty much where you want as opposed to living somewhere that's cheap , I'd say that would be living the dream .
Still working after the that ( which I think is important ) is for different reasons , certainly not the money .