There've been many a season where I couldn't get work, and I think that you learn character development and you learn how to really want what you do in life when you can't really do it.
As to judging our own time, and thereby gaining some basis for a judgment of future possibilities, we are doubtless not only too close to it to appraise it but too much formed by it and enclosed within it to do so.
If cooking becomes an art form rather than a means of providing a reasonable diet, then something is clearly wrong.