Half way through customizing a Hugo theme, I suddenly realized that I don't need a theme at all. Hugo can be used themelessly, where you just write templates specifically for your site. Everything was so much easier from there.
Instead we spent a week researching how popular 3rd party themes did things, and made a hybrid. Then we moved away completely. I really wanted it to work for us and we were so close. Hugo is so fast and is brilliant on a couple of things.... but barely missed.
I can't remember exactly but with what we were doing we were going to be heavily dependant on their Scratchpad, which felt like a hack. It's all just hacks, and they like it. Lack of solid conventions, and they LOVE it.
My theme is so simple I think redoing it as themeless may be better
It's that theming structure that was a pain to figure out the first time for me