Choosing a Spider

Now that I have desensitised myself to sudden spiders on my social media streams, I feel ready to tackle the next stage of my mission - learning to live with spiders. To do this, I feel the need to get a pet spider.
I am very aware - as many have said - that I can just pick up a spider out of the garden. For free. I've been told that I'm wasting my money buying a spider, that I don't need one, that this is a fools endeavor. And maybe they're right. But nothing ever came of giving up before you even start and I want to do this.
I don't feel like I can just pick up a sider from my garden. The majority of spiders in my garden are garden spiders, Araneus diadematus. I hate these spiders with a passion. They hang upside down, seemingly in mid air, with a predatory attitude about them. And yes, I know that spiders are predatory, that's kind of the point of them. But these ones are just......nightmare fuel. And every time I walk down the garden path their webs smother my face because they absolutely insist on spreading them across my garden path. I hate these spiders, and I hate their webs.

No. Absolutely not! My first foray into the world of arachnids has to be something a little....softer. Something a little less....spidery. Something more like Lucas the Spider, with his fluffy legs and his big eyes... And having joined several groups, researched on the internet, and generally had a look around, I have decided to get a jumping spider, Phidippus regius. A lot of my reasoning revolves around just how damned cute they are! The big doe-y eyes, the fluffy little moustaches, and the fact that actually, they don't look a lot like what I picture a spider to be. Despite having eight legs, they are as far removed from a spider as I'd expect to get. It helps that there are a number of influencers out there - Tiana the Bug Lady, and Mini Robo Muppets being two of them - that post a lot of videos of these little dudes just doing what spoods do. They make them look very friendly and approachable, and they seem to have a lot of fun while doing so. They make it look so easy - and from what I can tell - both have used jumping spiders to overcome their own arachnophobias, so this is the species I have opted for.

Edit: I have since discovered that you can in fact get zebra jumping spiders in the UK - Salticus scenicus - and that this was the spider they meant. This species is far smaller than Phiddipus regius, and to be honest - I've not yet seen one. They are cute though!