Yes, I see your point. I personally like this kind of stuff, tinkering with my setup and whatnot. But it's definitely not for everyone. Have you tried using a Desktop Environment under the hood of i3, like xfce? Might be closer to what you're looking for.

There's also a subreddit called "unixporn" where people post their various setups, usually accompanied by their configs. Might be worth to take a look at.

Other than that, there's really only waiting or going back to macOS, I suppose...