You'll find that there's never a shortage of cool work to do. What if you didn't wait for your boss to come to you, committed to (mostly only) your own stuff,

You'll find that there's never a shortage of cool work to do. What if you didn't wait for your boss to come to you, committed to (mostly only) your own stuff, knocked it out of the ballpark, and then only committed to boss-driven stuff that was at least as cool as what you'd otherwise be doing by yourself? That's actually a really good way to 1) be known for hustle 2) be known as a finisher 3) work on mostly cool stuff. There is no shortage of awesome possible work. Ever.