"The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago.
The second best time to plant a tree is right now."
- Chinese Proverb

I hit a major milestone today.

I've known it's been coming for a few weeks now, but as of payday today, I've managed to pick up momentum on that debt snowball a bit more so that I could finally get completely out of credit card debt. Hell, as of today, I even have a good Emergency Fund to fall back on should Murphy rear his ugly head.

Sure, I have two more debt hurdles to clear with a 7-year-old IRS bill and a trivial student loan I'm paying about 2.6% interest on, but I'm well on track to leave them both in the dust within the next 6-8 months, and that's with making contributions to my 401k, Roth-IRA and future living expenses.

Whether or not I've realized it before, I've been on this path for a while, but without going into details as to why, I've given myself such a financial awakening these past 6 weeks or so. I wish I'd done so long ago, but doing so at all has been a huge deal for me. I honestly can't advise enough that anyone who doesn't feel financially secure immediately pick up Suze Orman's book YOUNG, FABULOUS AND BROKE and Dave Ramsey's TOTAL MONEY MAKEOVER, as they've really taught me that I can get a handle on this... Now, I have to say the views of each definitely difer a bit (Orman goes the rational route of building your FICO score, where as Ramsey is more of the mind that you should never take on any debt at all so who cares about building your FICO), but between what I've been able to take from them, and what I've gleamed off the many terrific financial websites that I've turned on to in the last few weeks (I use Consumerist.com as a jump-off point, but also like the MoneyBlogNetwork.com family and many others), I feel I'm well on my way to taking care of myself not just in the future, but in the here and now.

And I wish my debt hadn't weighed so heavily on me in the past, but it did hold that power over me, and I'm thrilled that I can now approach each day with not just a different financial perspective but a whole different outlook on life.

Anyway, just had to share the good news. Here's a few other things going on at the moment as well...

... I'm leaving for New York on Monday afternoon, for a brief 36 hours or so. I love that city and look forward to getting away for even a short amount of time.

... I posted a bit of a production reel on my website last week, so if you're still curious what types of things I do each day, feel free to check out the following URL:
http://www.zentertainment.com/blog/?page_id=6443

... And speaking of my site, I must admit I'm probably more amazed than anyone that I'm still managing daily updates, but I've found a nice formula that works with what I already do each day, so I really think I'll be able to keep it up. It's always nice to see you're getting traffic though, so please, stop by http://www.ZENtertainment.com/blog from time to time and see what I'm up to. I've got a couple new features I'm hoping to add soon, including an interesting new business venture...

... Oh, and one last thing... One more thing I'm excited about... I write things for ATTACK OF THE SHOW all the time, sure, but I've never actually written out a scripted sketch. Well, hopefully setting a trend for the future, I had an idea Friday morning which I wrote up into at least the bare bones of what I think could be a pretty funny skit on the show. Our head writer (we're like the one variety show that isn't union, so we'll still be live once the Writer's Guild strike hits on Monday) seemed to really like it and sent it around to try to get it on the show on Monday, so if all goes well, I'll post it up here once i return from NYC.