Thank you for your willingness to help but since you are not a witness, it would be unfair to make you have expenses instead of those who already get their block producing rewards.
Fortunately situation with nodes improved since the time when I wrote that post (it's quite old).
Of course, you don't need to be a witness to run your own Steem node. It's actually a great idea to get some better knowledge about this platform.
For your own needs you can follow same instructions that are for exchanges (using your account name). It's a consensus node that runs account history plugin for a single account (your own in your case).
I think I will cover such configuration in my next episode of Steem Pressure.
Good luck.
RE: Call for steem seed nodes!