[ghaff]

That may be true but it's not that much more effort to create a hosted Wordpress site or to create a blog on Blogger. Arguably, those still lock you in a bit more than self-hosting Wordpress with your own domain, but the data is exportable and there is some migration effort associated with moving no matter what you do.

[HeadsUpHigh]

Yes it is. For starters I have no idea what any of these are and I probably need to input my credit card somewhere along the way.

[ghaff]

Actually you don't need a credit card for Blogger; it's a free Google service. And while people have beefs with Google as well, Blogger uses pretty much standard HTML if you want to export it.