Anyone broken free from professional life? Warning: rant

Ok, my story. Sorry it's pretty long. I've never written this out before.

It took me two attempts to do this but I now have a business where I earn a similar amount to what I did before but work a lot fewer hours and have very little stress. We had a baby in June and I've been able to spend most of this summer messing around with her, which has been priceless. I've had to work a bit, a couple of hours a day from home, answering emails and stuff and an average of 1-2 days per week in the office. I'll go back to more normal hours in the winter, 30-40 hours per week with the odd busy spell.

Downsides are that some of the stuff I do is a bit boring, I miss the excitement that came out of some things I did before, and the colleagues - but it came at a price. And I can't really switch off on holiday, have to look at emails every day and sometimes do stuff in response.

I used to work as a management consultant, so it was well paid but bad lifestyle. Decided I'd set up on my own. I did, and I thought I had a big project to kick things off.

Just after I'd started my wife decided she wanted to get out of what she was doing so I said 'do some things for me for a while'. She did, but immediately got ill, so we went from 2 incomes to zero in the space of 2 months.

Big project kept getting delayed (then finally went away) and other stuff took longer to materialise. I had 4 months with no revenue, then I got a couple of small things, then two more months with nothing.

My wife's health was deteriorating. She had breast cancer and was going downhill rapidly.
At this point I set deadlines for things like selling the house. I also tried to find a job, but the message was I needed to go for longer on my own to be credible.

Finally work picked up and became more consistent. I had three years of decent revenue.
My wife had an operation then various rounds of treatment so she was mostly in good health, but with a relapse every so often, then another round of chemo. But we both knew things would only go one way. I found that really hard to deal with. Also, while work was ok it was always project to project and I never knew if the next one would materialise or not, so life was stressful all round. Around this time most of my friends were having children so I didn't see them so much and got pretty lonely.

After 3 years, I got an approach out of the blue to do a job in a similar area. I took it. To begin with it was great not to have to worry about where the next month's money was coming from. And exciting getting to know a bunch of new people. But the hours could sometimes be horrendous (not often but a couple of times per year would be 100+ per week, for 2-3 weeks). And I was really shit at the politics, promotions I was expecting didn't happen, etc. Gradually I got pissed off.

My wife's health continued to be up and down, but in 2009 it was more down, and she died in July. Although I'd known it was coming for years, it still knocked me for six. As a result I lost interest in most things, especially work. After just existing for a few months, I decided I'd leave. But what would I do? I spent a year or so trying to figure it out? Got more into cycling: lots of free weekends was great for audax. Had various ideas. Got keen on setting up a bike tour company, but decided against it. Also, as I wasn't interested in anything, apart from cycling, I hardly spent any money so saved most of my salary.

Had a sabbatical / unpaid leave in summer 2010. Went cycling across France, did a tour around Albania then another in the Himalayas. Was fab but didn't give me inspiration.

By spring 2011 I'd had enough, so just handed my notice in. Had 3 months notice and took the piss, probably only worked 3 weeks. Mostly stayed at home or went cycling for 6 hours over lunchtime. Finished in August, right before PBP. Did that, then got home and thought 'what am I going to do now?'

A guy who had worked with me got in touch and said he was bored and wanted to leave, did I want to do something together. Yes, but I needed a different model so it wasn't like last time, constantly chasing clients to get work.

I decided I'd write reports on half a dozen industries I knew well from my work. This took me a few months and I put up a website to sell them. People bought them and some of them wanted me to do consulting work. The model didn't work for the other guy so he moved on. But it was great for me as I could live on the low but regular income from selling reports so had no stress. And when the projects came along it was hard work for a few weeks but I got well paid for it.

Things gradually built from there. I now have a few people who write reports so I don't have to do the basic stuff any more: one who works full time for me and others on a freelance basis, plus others I pull in for consulting work. And married again, had baby, etc.

Key things were:
It didn't work out for me first time, I had bad luck, but I'd also got the model wrong. But I was able to get back into work so I could later have another go.
It was really important to save money as it took me 6 months to get going. I'm very lucky that our economy values what I do so I was able to save a good cash buffer.
I found a way to use my existing skills but for my own benefit, and arrived at a model that was a bit different but works well for me.
Even though the other guy didn't work out, I needed his involvement to develop my idea, and he wouldn't have approached me if I hadn't handed my notice in.