Your first apartment will probably be small. The freedom inside it won’t be.

Square footage and freedom are not the same measurement. A small place where the choices are yours feels bigger than a comfortable one where they are not, because what you notice day to day is who decides the hours, the noise and the food. People expect a first apartment to be a letdown and are surprised by how good the smallness feels. The constraint is real, it is just not the important part.

You are probably a while off this, so treat it as practice. Take one corner of where you live now and make it fully yours, arranged how you want it. That is the feeling, in miniature.