That’s the crux of your problem. You’re much like me. And in effect, much like many renters. What you need is pretty much a 1 bedroom place to sleep, make a few meals and come back to after working or a night out.
What you want is a place where you can have space, throw parties and have al sorts of friends over to socialize and be impressed with the place.
And for the cherry on top of that sundae, you’d like the place to be good enough to support whatever future direction your life takes.
It’s like LA-renter said, find yourself a great place to rent. You’ll be amazed at how jealous people get when they realize you have such a great place and it’s only costing you 1/3rd of their mortgage payment.
The more time I spent looking around for a place last time, the more apparent it became to me that the difference between a virtual slumlord rental and a nice place was $100 and difference between slum and a great place was only $300.