I've been a SWE for 25+ years and an artist for longer, showing art online as early as 1993 (anybody remember Gopher?), and blogging semi-regularly since the early 2000s. Originally I kept a strict separation between the two out of fear that people interested in one topic wouldn't take me seriously if I had any trace of another.
A few years ago I finally decided that being "taken seriously" was perhaps not that important and I just threw everything together in the same pot, under a single domain and implementation. I do tag each post with one or more topics, and I have an RSS feed for each topic, so people with more specialized interests can subscribe just to the topics they care about. I also eliminated all analytics and comment features as distractions not relevant to my main goals, namely: capturing, refining, and sharing my thoughts about whatever topics I care about.
As a result, I've found I've enjoyed writing and looking back at my previous work more. I realized that my blog was for me, and the maybe five other people in the world who like it the way I do.
As for "building a personal brand" and "developing an audience," others would know much more about that -- I believe, without much evidence to support it, that it will lead to more happiness if you focus on finding your true voice and writing with integrity about things you care about, rather than thinking about ways to get more eyeballs on your pages. YMMV.
I hope you'll consider sharing your URL when you're ready. (http://johnj.com is mine.)