Tap. Tap. Is this thing on?

Oh hi.  I'm back after almost 4 years.

First of all, I need your opinions.  I know Blogger is kind of like the anchovy of pizza toppings - a few people still like it but it's pretty old school with very few things you can customize.  I'm thinking about changing to a different platform/company/whatever you call it.  Do y'all recommend Wordpress?  I've looked online and that seems to be what is recommended.  But I have to pay for it so I want to see if anyone has better suggestions before I switch and put my money into something.  Keep in mind that technology is not my thang, so if it requires a lot of technical expertise it's probably not for me. 

The main thing I'd really like to be able to do is set it up so I can have people request to subscribe and not have it open for anyone in the world to see.  I saw what June went through with people finding her blog.  I had a different blog years ago that someone in my real life found and she started leaving anonymous comments about my appearance that were quite hurtful.  It was all because she had a falling out with a mutual friend who ended up having to go to the police because this girl was leaving the mutual friend threatening voice mails.  It was really ugly and while she and I had never had any issues, she decided to find me online and start attacking me because I remained friends with the mutual person.  I had absolutely nothing to do with their fight - it was all a business thing gone bad between them.  I'd really like to avoid having something like that happen again so I want to secure things a little bit and that doesn't seem to be an option here on Blogger. 

Since some of you may be new and know next to nothing about me, I'll tell y'all a little bit about myself. 

I've lived in Atlanta my entire life.  I'll be 50 in less than two weeks (how did that happen?).  I have two brothers - one older, one younger.  Both of my biological parents are deceased.  My mom died a couple of weeks after I turned 5 and my dad was remarried 9 months later before I turned 6.  The week after my 44th birthday my dad died.  So hey, my birthday brings up super happy anniversaries, right?  My mom who raised me is still alive.  I work at a law firm and have been a legal assistant for 18 years.  I was once married to my high school sweetheart (who was anything but a sweetheart after a number of  years and instead became an alcoholic, bi-polar, emotional abusing asshole) and I've been divorced for 14 years.  I had an 8 year relationship after that with a Brazilian guy and that's a long story for another day (a few of you already know that story).  I had another 2 year relationship which I ended last summer, but I don't want to talk about that one particularly. 

Now I'm single and dating.  And I have stories.  So many stories.  But I don't want people to be able to find them, so I really need to move things somewhere else before I share them. 

I know, this is a boring post.  They won't all be. 

But for now, I just need to know if Wordpress is the way to go.