Penny, you make a lot of excellent points, although I would disagree with one bit...
badpenny:
Your sole job as the GM is to make the players look awesome.
It's not necessarily about making them look awesome as it is making certain everyone has a good time. Whether than means their character dies a quiet death in order to reclaim their family's honor, or they defeat a god in single combat, or the gang manages to have a good conversation over ice cream, that's the core of it (as you mention yourself, all is genre-dependent). It's not that all of this can't be what people consider "being awesome," but when GMs are set up with the expectation the word "awesome" brings then they can go a little overboard (which is why I like a lot of your other advice about NOT going overboard).
But, more to the point, it's about
everyone having a good time. Your job as a GM isn't to make yourself miserable or to feel powerless just because you're not a player. You need to enjoy what you're doing, and maybe that means you do something amazing with your NPCs now and then, or you
do bring the players and characters into the story you'd like to actually run and play in instead of letting them run roughshod over everything. The players are not the only people at the table, and it irks me as both GM and player when people get it into their heads that players are the only ones that matter to the story. Yes, players are important, and without them you're writing a novel for yourself, but you need to find ways to enjoy the experience on your own. Maybe that means you need a group okay with being outshone on occasion, or maybe it means you need to run horror instead of adventure, or maybe it means that all you need is for someone in the group to say "Wow" by the end.
Whatever it is, never forget about putting a smile on your own face just because you're trying to make your players happy.
Of course, don't forget about your players either (again,
everyone should be enjoying the game), but don't ever forget about yourself. You are a player too, in many ways, you just happen to be playing more characters than everyone else.