[archagon]

I've often thought about doing this. But I always end up coming back to the question: do I want to spend a month (or more) writing a blogging engine, or do I instead want to focus on my actual writing? And what will a custom engine actually give me, aside from sleepless nights and headaches?

Jekyll is a great answer in this regard. You don't have to reinvent the wheel (pagination, RSS, categories, dates, etc.), but you can still customize it with great ease. (Kind of like the Backbone.js of blogging engines, I guess.)