Choose your role
In many creative endeavors, we encounter:
The producer, the director, the star and the star's assistant.
The producer initiates. The producer says "yes."
The director (and often, the writer, a different version of directing) determines the plot, makes the decisions, owns the quality of what is produced.
The star is a celebrity, the draw, the one we want a selfie with. The star auditions and the star waits to be picked.
And the star's assistant? He gets coffee, copyedits, and generally gets unglamorous stuff done, but gets the satisfaction of steady work plus the chance to say he works for a star.
A survey of high school students found that they'd rather be a star's assistant than a judge, a senator or a CEO when they grew up. Safety near the spotlight.
I've done all of these jobs (sometimes at the same time, on the same project) and, for the right project, you can choose from any of them as well.
The assistant can't do the work without a star. The star needs to be chosen by the director. And the director needs a producer. But the producer–the producer gets to decide.
It's easy to be seduced into believing that you must wait to be picked, and even easier to worship those that have. It's far more interesting and generous, I think, to find the leverage and the guts you need to produce, to become the impresario, the one who says 'go'.
[13 more minutes on this on video.]