All, I just want to report back.
After viewing all the comments and suggestion. I have decided to build my site using WordPress. You guys are right, it is not that hard, to get the site up and running. It would not be elegant and professionally looking. It is functional at least. While I am doing that to keep making enhancement to the site, I am using micro.blog and medium.com in the mean time. Until the site is acceptable to my own minimum standards at least.
Thanks a lot for the suggestions. I really appreciate it.
One final question (I hope) on this thread. Once I have done more fine tuning to the WordPress site with more plug in , etc. Can I take that to another WordPress site? currently I am hosting that on dreamhost but I am thinking of moving that to another site such as one.com (see this post)
Hope I do not have to restart again if I move to another hosting site