To me, it's just a long term position. I have some Berkshire long calls that I've been rolling for a decade or more. I don't even calculate how much I've gained or lost on the individual legs. It's just one method of having the exposure to the stock.

Certainly an arguably valid way of thinking about it.

In the case of long-dated DITM call options, that's essentially a bit of permanent leverage that you can only implement by taking many short-lived bites because that is the only mechanism available.

Speaking of leverage. I read a paper about the most optimum amount of leverage. Unfortunately I can't find it now.
He pointed out that B&H was leverage 1X, although most people call it "unleveraged". As I recall he said the best amount was a little under 2X. Around 1.75X. 3X was too much and 4X was waaaay too much.
Based on that, for a 200 shares of a stock you would sell 80-100 shares and put that amount of money on 2X leverage. Preferably non-callable leverage, such as futures(?) or DITM calls.

When searching for that paper just now, I ran across another article (which I also cannot find again) that claimed to show that the 2x the daily performance of S&P500 (SSO etf) was not grossly dangerous to hold long term, despite the warnings.