This is a business and while the money is important, so is your time energy and your experience being a landlord.

I should channel that initial energy and excitement into finding the deals.

Making almost 17K per year doesn't seem all that bad to me, for the minimum amounts of time and energy required to manage a single house.And of course, appreciation and rental income is highly likely to increase pretty substantially over the course of 30-40 years, which puts me in an even better situation.  

They don't have the energy to decide this stuff or time to sort through all the madness.If however you have the time, then by all means, do the damn thing yourself.

From a commercial real estate standpoint, because of the city's symbiotic relationships with the energy sector, Houston is often looked at closely as a indicator of where the US CRE market in general might head.  

This way, honest folks like us could conserve our time and energy in the pursuit of our businesses.

Not saying it can't be done, but it will end up costing more money, time, and energy to get it done with the live in tenants. 

Contrary to most of the replies on this thread, bigger dog does not equal more energy and more destruction.

The more time passes, the more I realize how much better I can focus my energy.

This may eliminate your original problem of not having the time/energy to manage the properties yourself.