For years this blog ran on a CMS with a database, a caching layer, and a server that needed updates every few weeks. It worked, but it was more infrastructure than a personal blog needed.
What changed
I moved everything to static HTML. Posts are written in a simple editor, published as flat files, and served from a CDN. Page loads went from 800ms to under 100ms. Hosting costs dropped to near zero.
What I gave up
Dynamic comments, real-time search, plugin ecosystems. I replaced comments with email replies, search with a simple client-side filter, and plugins with plain HTML and CSS.
The trade-off was worth it. Less to maintain means more time to write. And that is the whole point of having a blog.