alt Hacker NewsI ended up separating out a "plumbing" blog, from the "real" blogs, with no discussion of the tinkering allowed on the real ones - so the plumbing blog grew in details but didn't "count" for the non-meta blogging I was trying to accomplish. A little bit of sleight-of-hand but it worked for me...
In my case it was less about the discussion of the tinkering and more the tinkering itself. I'd spend all my blogging time tinkering with the site, to the point where it's never ready and never actually deployed. As of right now in my projects folder I have an (actually finished and usable) Ghost theme and a handful of Wagtail blog projects in various states of functionality. Neither have actually been deployed. (at least I learnt enough Wagtail to be dangerous so I guess that's a win)
I ended up subscribing to Bear Blog and calling it a day. In fact I need to delete those half-baked attempts so I am never tempted to get back to them.