You need to learn about control and responsibility. See, you have become responsible for your work, but you were not in control of it. Your employers have controlled it, and you let them by not pushing back on their decisions, which is understandable if you need work. I've done it. The problem is you are also now responsible for this work, because your name is on it. You're now screwed because the rest of the world assumes that you were both in control and responsible.

That's how you got in this situation, and the sad thing is, that's how it usually goes. You work on whatever projects you can find, never really getting anything challenging or even in good taste, and then when you go to get your next job you have nothing to show for your work. Cycle repeats.

The way you break out of this pattern is with open source. Open source lets you be both responsible and in control. You choose what you're working on, you do the work, you get your name on it. It's all you. You can start your own project, work on someone else's, and even blog about it. You get the recognition and you get experience with people interested in the new stuff, not the crap you do at work.

This is how I've had to work for a decade or more. Nobody I work for is interested in letting me do something interesting or challenging. I go to work and work on very mundane things, and then go home and write advanced algorithms to create web servers and bizarre protocols for fun.

If it weren't for open source, I'd still be working as an enterprise Java douchebag. Open source and writing literally saved me from the "industry" more than once and kept my love of code alive long past any love of the job.