I guess starting over is the best course of action
So I spent probably 7 hours altogether working on this, with the express intent of getting a theme working, and I have failed. I know when I have been beat, so I killed the repo and started over.
Maybe it had something do with the Jekyll version being old, who knows. Just copying in my posts seemed to work so I guess it’s whatever.
Not sure if I will keep writing here or not, though I would really like to get a theme in place. And maybe the ability to comment. Who knows.
This site seems promising: https://aleksandrhovhannisyan.com/blog/jekyll-comment-system-github-issues/