I've been a #DoomEmacs user for some time, now, even having curated my own literate config out of their "static" files - along with all the extra stuff one adds to such a thing.
As one does, in the past I've also attempted to do my own #emacs config from scratch, usually falling into the "let's recreate doom!" hole, whether I wanted to or not (thus the reason I just went the route I did).
Over the past couple of months I've decided to - slowly - do the emacs bankruptcy declaration. Now, just to make things even more interesting I have decided against the use-package macro. Why? Because why not!
I've been using my scratch build for a month or so, haven't even opened my doom config up. It's been a great process, learning process, more understand of the process. It helps that I've been on a learn lisp quest for the past couple of years, too ( #CommonLisp, #sbcl, #clojure, #elisp of course).
The large emacs distros are great an an excellent way to find curated packages. Doom is even a really nice framework. Sometimes you just want to do your own thing.