[sillysaurus2]

The most important thing you can do is relax.

Sure, life is pretty grim in the sense that you can't do whatever you want unless you're rich. On the other hand, your life as a coder is far, far higher quality than e.g. a construction worker's or (regrettably) a teacher's.

One thing you could do is try to grow a source of passive income. See patio11 for insights on achieving this.

Also, three failures isn't anything to worry about or lose confidence over. Just remember how many times Jobs failed. Most of the successful people on here have a similar background of failures. The path to success is usually through failure, as paradoxical as that sounds. Sometimes you'll just be unlucky multiple times in a row. That's just life. But that's also a reason to keep your spirits high, because it's far less likely you'll fail ten times in a row. So, keep trying.

[christiangenco]

The referenced patio11: http://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest-hits/

[heelhook]

> because it's far less likely you'll fail ten times in a row. So, keep trying

Stated like that, that sounds like an example of a Monte Carlo fallacy. Sometimes "just keep trying" is not sound advice but wishful thinking.

[sillysaurus2]

The Monte Carlo fallacy is believing that if something happens more frequently than normal during some period, then it will happen less frequently in the future. This isn't an instance of that.

If the goal was to flip tails in a coin toss, and I said "Keep flipping! You're bound to get tails within ten flips," then there's only a 1 out of 1024 chance that I'd be mistaken.

Success isn't as simple as a coin toss, but sometimes the best strategy is to try all possibilities as quickly as possible. This was how Carmack succeeded, for example.

There is no alternative but to try; best get used to the idea of trying many times before succeeding.

[lifeisstillgood]

Added to which we assume the OP is learning - improving his coin flipping ability - such as putting the heads on top before flipping anyway.

Other advice would be to put your failures up here and accept some (pretty painful) critques. Then OP could learn faster ...

[mguillemot]

Well, if you take lessons from your failures, you end up in a better position after each one. So it's definitely not like flipping a coin with independant outcomes.