Considering a blog column width - what's best on desktop?

My blog has 932 posts (yes this one you are reading), with a column width of 580 and a sidebar of 280 (total 900 pixels wide with padding).

I have a second blog with a one column set at 886, no sidebar with only nine posts.

The question I have for myself, and anyone who reads, is what reads best on desktop? For mobile, there is little difference.

I have a style where I lead with one image, have a few more and use a video where I can. As a lesser point, embedding a slideshow has it's issues. Old school picasa with still embed, but uses flash - little use on Android. I may try embedding a google+ post, but I cannot control the page width size (not that I can see, scroll to FAQ).

The most successful blogs I have seen are the ones I can visit, read fast and get out get out quickly (without feeling annoyed - with ads and popups). For example, any google blog is excellent, like this one, googleblog.blogspot.com they have a 660 and right side bar of 248.

It seems quite fashionable these days to make a one page website, here's one:
connectedclassrooms where they have a page width of 100% that fills you entire browser/desktop (and just one indexed page).

Another one, madewithcode has 77 pages, but for me still reads like a pamphlet. I'm sure that's it's purpose. Most of the people in the world are people, not brands.

And back in the day, people wrote in leather bound paper journals and it was private. This is the last journal I ever bought (over ten years ago) - my drawings are terrible and the text is not searchable.

In the modern day, are we writing or creating less (for finished thoughts)? This post started off comparing two blog column widths, but has soon found it's way to how we write, why we write and how people read it.

On that note, my next post explores the writing process and something called creative nonfiction. I used to teach writing to 4-11 year olds - nothing special, but over and over again, it was teaching the passion to write rather than the words, the spelling or the paragraphs.

My head started to write this post, but my heart has ended it.