Sounds like a good use for eval. You could even pull everything into one script:

$step_1 = 0;
$step_2 = 0;
$step_3 = 0;
$working = 1;
while( $working ) {

   eval {
        $step_1 || first();
        $step_2 || second();
        $step_3 || third();
        clean_up();
   };
   if( $@ ) {
      print STDERR $@;
   } else {
      $working = 0;
   }
}
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update Err, make that $step_1 ||= first() ...

-derby