You can also do this same exercise with DSCR lenders and mortgage brokers on Bigger Pockets.

My goals are to close on two real estate deals, improve my physical fitness, finish my masters degree, and I am getting married in may so I want to start off my marriage well and enjoy life with my fiance!

For real estate strategies such as house hacking or even buying and rehabbing, those require you to be physically close to where the project or renter's will be.

You would like to be able to do the things you want (travel, take classes, read, exercise, visit friends/family) without the constraints of a 9-5. 

Once you have this team in place, you should have the foundation to invest in any market confidently while not being there physically.

The fact that I am out of state makes it even more difficult because I am a single mom of 2 toddlers so I can’t go there physically before making a decision.

Thank you for your feedback, in Arizona specifically, as an out of state investor (I'm in California) it is the state law that they need someone living physically in Arizona to represent you with your legal affairs. 

Physical products are difficult to make efficient!

As a mental exercise, can you imagine the perspective of an investor that bought a property from you just 8 months prior to that email, had his FIRST TENANT miss payments, lie about making payments, make partial payments, then ultimately skip out on four months rent?

Physical assets are a different animal.If you're not really familiar with equities, but you want to exposure to gain something that'll appreciate in value then sure go spread yourself around and buy a lot of funds, stocks, and make sure you aren't allocating more than 3% or 5% or whatever dumb allocation folks have anywhere.