First of all, I am not a "newbie". And I take offense at your presumption. I merely offered a couple of suggestions as I had experienced a similar problem with a beer.
By the way, not all beers will mellow with time. And sometimes beers are just too mellow. My suggestions are just that. Do what you feel is correct with YOUR beer.
Take offense, then, if that's what you feel is appropriate. Before you do that, though, please re-read my post.
I have no idea if you are a newbie or not. I know that the OP is - he's told us as much.
He's the one that feel like his beer doesn't have much flavor. Have a gander through the beginning brewer forum, and I guarantee that you'll find tons of similar threads. It's VERY common for beer to present as bland or watery in the fermenter, but most of the time, carbonation and age really bring the flavors out.
Your stout that you dumped may have indeed been hopeless. The thing is, your beer was carbed and bottled, correct? The OP's is not. Comparing the two is apples and German shepherds (i.e. less in common than apples and oranges). The only problem I had with your post was you using your stout as a reference for the OP's problem. They aren't the same issue.
As an aside - there have been MANY superb stouts brewed without oak or vanilla. Just saying.
Does age fix every beer? Of course not. It does fix (or help) a huge portion of beers - there is a thread with a couple hundred pages of examples of this.
My point is, newbies are often trying to diagnose problems with their beer when it's still in the fermenter. An experienced brewer like you may be able to do just that, whereas newbies usually cannot. If you try to correct something that may well not even be an issue, congratulations... you may have just screwed your beer up for no reason whatsoever.
Be patient, OP. Bottle your beer, and let it carb up. If you don't like it then, you can start looking into ways to improve the next batch. Screwing with it now will almost certainly not end well.