How Do I Start an Impressive Project if I Don’t Have an Impressive Interest?

You don't.

I totally disagree that passion follows 'impressive accomplishment'. I've never met anyone that said 'Yeah, I won a spelling bee in the 3rd grade, so I decided to be a language teacher.'

It doesn't work like that. They won the spelling bee because they cared enough to be the best.

Sure, you can start a whiz-bang new project that everyone will notice. But if you don't -care- about it, you won't get it to the point that it's worth using in a real live scenario. And let's be honest: It's not really impressive if it's not usable.

I've started projects that seemed merely interesting and became obsessed with them after steady immersion. Sometimes you just need to see the glimmer of something to motivate you to dig and find the gold.