Interesting, nice that you like Ghost. I went to university with one of the founders, and I was kinda considering applying for a job there, they seem like a pretty cool company.

Yes HN seems to be largely random chance. I've had this and one other post do quite well on here recently, and both times it was resubmissions that succeeded, with the first submission getting basically 0 votes.

I would also think it's worth keeping my blog around for the few articles people might find useful (there's one about Docker networking that keeps getting visits, even though surely docker must have fixed that bug by now...)

FWIW, my Jekyll + GitHub Pages + Cloudflare blog is free to run & handles HN traffic no problem (apart from the small cost of the domain name, which is sort of optional). I'd be happy to tell you more if you think it might save you some money.