What blogging platform do you use?

Hey everyone, I have been meaning to start a blog and have been experimenting with different blogging platforms. Wordpress requried me to have a database and maintain updates to the platform and it's plugins. Medium is nice but I don't like to have the giant "M" in the corner and I am not interested in paying to get it customized. Blogspot was nice but didn't feel right. I will probably end up coding a personalized blog template but before doing so I decided to ask around. So what blogging platform would you recommend/use? I am looking preferably for a free self hosted platform but all suggestions will be considered.