Am I a dumb Design-Whore or innately creative?

Today I am compelled to write this feeling of mine which has somewhat throwing me to and fro from feeling like a dumb design whore or being innately creative.

You must be wondering why I used the word "Design Whore", well I came across this really informative and well written post on how designers are being taken advantage of and how to prevent oneself from getting misused or abused.

The story starts when I first started working for a big organization after a few freelance projects, I joined there as a junior designer / webmaster. I didn't know much and was still learning a lot from day to day activities. Interestingly the organization I joined was not a design firm, so there were not many seniors to learn from. During my tenure, our company hired an ad agency / design firm to design all the print materials for all the corporate products and services. The firm came up with a bunch of ugly ideas and some really catchy ideas. In the internal meetings we all agreed upon that one design and I was asked if I am able to duplicate these designs. I replied "yes" because if a junior is asked "can you do this" and he replies "no sir" then it is really not very nice. Anyway... I took the concept of their designs and created a bunch of artwork that later went into printing and the whole country could see those designs. It was a great exposure for me, but I know it wasn't "originally" me.

Since that day, I kind of felt that it was an immoral thing to do as a person and as an organization. So since then I have tried my best to be original in all my designs.

Eight years later, all I design is originally me, I've enjoyed designing quite a lot. Isolated dark room, background music according to the mood and everything, it was and has become more like my hobby of designing in leisure time. I make wallpapers and other conceptual artwork for pleasure other than clients' work or with my employer.

In the life of a designer there are a lot of projects when you give samples of your work or create a few "demos" to actually get the project... some of them end up with "Its not what we were looking for" or mostly... "We'll let you know soon"... and you never hear from them again. This is called speculative work... we'll pay if we like it.

Speculative work is IMO somewhat a necessity for beginner to a mid-career designer. You don't have a lot to show as your work so you do end up working and designing... trying to prove your creative skills in front of the most dumbest non-creative individuals.

After passing the mid-career stage and when you have enough in your portfolio you should take control of what you do and how and when you get paid for what you do. Personally, I try to link to or display NO!SPEC anywhere through which I could be reached such as my website or emails etc. So I've tried to block out the work which is judged by comparing a number of designer who designed for free and then the (mostly) idiotically chosen "winner" gets paid.

But after all the effort one does, there are still some projects or references where you don't emphasize on your rules and standard procedures. Recently an old friend of mine asked me a favor to design a logo for his company, I did him a favor and gave him a few options for his logo. 2 weeks later, when I followed him up he said, nah! Other guys in the company didn't like them "that" much. So we kind of had it designed it from somewhere else. He also added (feeling proud) that he paid very less for the logo and was done in less than one day. Now that was a slap in my face, because I know how to design a logo and I know why logo designs don't cost 5 dollars and I spent 5 days to come up with those options for his logo.

Another, in a very recent past, I came across a client who wanted his website designed. I asked him if he needs a logo as well, he said no I have it designed already. So I asked him to send me the design so that I could make the website according to the logo's color scheme. What I got was a PSD with 2 layers, one was a cell phone image of the monitor screen displaying a logo and above that layer was a trace of that image. Upon inquiring the guy told me that he had it designed on one of the "free" logo making websites. It was indeed a pathetic logo. Anyway, he asked me to change the shade of one specific color in the logo for which I would have to re-create the logo... So I did, he also asked me if I could improve the logo if I could, so I did that too. I kept my followup for the contents that he was supposed to send me for the website so I could send him the costing for the website. But he just kept on delaying the contents form his end, in the meantime he asked me if I could send him a few sample layout of visiting cards that I had designed earlier. I didn't give him any designs but, did a quite clean, minimalist design for his visiting card. Then the guys cell phone was switched off, no email replies, no reply on messengers etc and this goes on for one whole month approximately. Couple of days back I got to talk to him and he said, we actually had it designed by someone else. I asked him casually that if they didn't like the design or they already had it designed before I sent them my design. He quite openly replied to me that no, we actually liked your design but we made another one based on your design. I mean what the heck! I haven't heard from him since and there is no costing or talks about payments whatsoever!

So now with the whole story from start till the end... if you were in my shoes, what would you feel like? A dumb design whore who is just getting abused? or an innately creative person with a demand for his creative skills and people actually wanting to use his work by hooks or by crooks?