Coding Horror says that we're in the Bubble 2.0. I definitely agree, things are really bubbling nowadays, and gives some reasons why it's different than the last bubble, including that people have always-on high-speed internet connections, that viable ad networks are emerging, Moore's law keeps happening, and open source is rocking.
Things that I'm doing to keep my own little bubble from popping.
1) Live cheaply - I'm living really inexpensively, in a great little town on the coast up from Vancouver. I have cheap hosting, I started with a $20 a month deal with Quantact, then upgraded to two Quantact servers, and then graduated to one Quantact server and on big dedicated iweb server. In a few months I'll be moving to Amazon EC2.
2) Work hard - I'm working on a whole bunch of projects, working really hard and having fun. I get up nice and early and work until noon, then go work out at the gym, then come back and read, then have supper and then work again on the computer in the evenings.
3) Exercise Lots - I go to the gym 5 days a week, and really give'r. I work really hard on the computer in the morning, and by noon, I'm going a little wiggy, so I go and work out, and it really helps me to get out of thinking small, and think about the big picture. I try to get to a point in the morning where I have a big coding problem to think of, then I can let it simmer as I warm up on the elliptical. Often, during the weightlifting part, I'm struck by the answer to my problem. I wish I would have figured this out when I was 20.
4) Have fun - Almost all the projects I'm doing are really neat, and I'm having fun with all of them. I'm doing mostly Ruby on Rails, but am doing healthy chunks of Perl, lots of XHTML/CSS and learning Lisp. Stretching your brain is really fun. Not having to do it to an externally imposed work schedule makes it possible to work really hard and not burn out.
5) Do other things - Besides coding, I'm growing quite a neat little garden, going for walks in the woods, cooking yummy meals, and drumming.
My current philosophy that I'm living by is to just work really really hard, and trust that everything is going to work out. After a year and a half, it's actually going pretty well, and I'm having the most fun of my life.
