Having to choose where to host it, what blog engine to use, write your own static site builder or go with something prebuilt, which analytics solution, what to name the site, how to SEO optimize your content, picking keywords, using keywords, how to create a newsletter, how to moderate comments and filter spam, what CDN to use, how to build a responsive design for mobile, put a GDPR disclaimer, write a privacy policy, how to display tasteful ads, where to display social media sharing icons, which affiliate campaign provider to go with, gzip or br encoding, jpeg or webp images, what url structure to use, what meta tags, how to title a page, test the rendering in different browsers, picking a font, finding a fast font provider, polyfills, minimize JS file size, picking stock images for articles, promoting your blog post on HN, gaming HN to get some upvotes, coming up with things to write about... fuck this.
Such a strawman. Getting Geocities scale traffic is easier than ever - it's just a much lower proportion of total internet usage. Raw HTML still works, just like it did on Geocities.
As for advertising... well, if you're going to start making money then expect to brush against regulations. At the very least, you may interest the taxman.