It's especially frustrating when the only reason for the consent banner is because they decided to use Google Analytics [1]. Just use something selfhosted like Matomo with a few privacy settings enabled [2] and then bam! no more annoying consent banners for visitors, no more Google tracking your visitors, and you still get the metrics you want. Everyone wins (well, except Google).
Or, and I know this is almost heresy here, but why not just leave off analytics? This is essentially a static page with text and images. What on earth are you analyzing? Why do you need to collect any data at all?
Vanity (in my experience). Though I don't know why web server logs aren't enough for that.
Engagement duration tracking is probably the most important thing client-side analytics brings for a site that's trying to make money, but for a personal site, seems unnecessary.
[1] http://boginjr.com/gdpr/
[2] https://matomo.org/faq/new-to-piwik/how-do-i-use-matomo-anal...