Thanks for your explanation!
As has already been said, and I tried to explain it myself, it’s just a misunderstanding with some terms: what I try to get from an image, that has captured a scene, is a certain feeling, something that has drawn my attention. So I choose a combination of speed-aperture (I always shot at my camera base ISO, that is ISO100) that gives me the image I wish. And that look, that image, is my objective (a.k.a. my target). Here is where one misunderstanding has gone for days. I don’t care at all about the scene middle-grey. I don’t care about my shot middle-grey. The only second I care about middle-gray is when my camera suggests a speed-aperture combination. Then I think about that suggestion and apply some compensation to get the look I wish. In a sense, I’m moving my image bounds up and down, but I know I can’t get the whole dynamic range of the scene, so I choose what fits me best. I choose which highlights will be clipped (if any), given the higher or lower importance of the shadows in my image.
I already have a middle-grey card, but I almost never use it.
Given my previous explanation, again there is a misunderstanding. I think we are talking about the same thing, but we are arguing because we don’t use the same words and then it seems that we talk about different things.
So, given that I compensate up or down my camera suggestion, and given that exposure can be understood as the amount of light per unit area reaching an image sensor, then the combination I set for my image (the exposure), that gives me the look I wish, to me is the right-exposure for that shot. And most probably it won’t be what my camera suggested me, but it’s the exposure I need.
And my target (as in my objective) is not a number, is not the bull’s eye, it’s the feeling I have when I look at the image.
I have shot film, and it always has been the same. My camera and its settings are just a tool to get an image, not to get a perfectly exposed middle-grey.
I hope all of this makes sense.