Where to start a new semi-personal blog?

You can make use of WordPress. You can start with just a simple blog structure and design and basic plugin too.

Then when you decide to optimize for monetization, you can include more plugins for it or SEO plugin later.

Even with a basic blog for personal thought, you can still make money by recommending books, products, gadgets and other stuff.

A WordPress Blog just fit what you wanted right now

We started using Hashnode for the community aspect which is lots of developers and builders.

Old but gold: https://www.blogger.com

I'm working on a blogging platform
Here's an example of an article. It's for creating a simple Bootstrap Blog

https://coolcoffeegadgets.com/coffee/5-Easy-Substitutes-for-Coffee-Creamer/

I'm setting it up to work on sharded hosting. I was looking for something that should be easy to use and create unlimited blogs.

as well as an api to add articles.

Ghost is super dope for blogging. However, I would rather suggest you to go with Wordpress.

Try: https://leakd.co/

Simple to use; make an account, import or start writing, add SEO, publish.....easy

(through the editor, you can find content relevant to the category you're writing about)

Sounds like Substack.com is what you are looking for.

I really believe personal blog needs to be expressing something deeply real about you to be successful. Thus I'd say - when you think it'll be fun to do.

If you are comfortable setting up WordPress, then use that otherwise, use Ghost, it's incredible if you are purpose is just blogging.

You can also use Medium if you don't want to bother with any tech and improve your distribution. However, it has its own limitations too.

Since you are looking at somewhat specific use case, probably Ghost is the better option for you because:

• Ghost has content monetization built-in, similar to Substack and unlike WP,
• SEO is not really a basis-of-competition any more, imho, so any option would be “good enough”. I am not an expert, though,
• Ghost has built-in CMS capabilities, similar to WF and unlike Substack; therefore you can create product pages, etc,
• Ghost has “turn key” single button press deployment options for hosting companies, which makes it easier to deploy. Again, this is not a basis-of-competition thing any more, it is easy to deploy anything at this point.

At this point in life, I find maintaining a somewhat complex software (like Ghost or WP) harder and harder. So, I prefer easier options.

If you look for not-as-complicated options as well and just something to write, there are other options, such as:
https://bearblog.dev/
https://write.as/
https://mataroa.blog/

But if you are technically adept, you can also go JAMStack way too, there are plenty of options there: https://jamstack.org/

If you like using Notion, I recommend https://www.potion.so. I run a couple of sites off it. It takes a Notion space and turns it into a website, super easy to use and fast.