Anything that would help me learn texturing like a pro is appreciated.

- skills
- tricks
- procedures

I can use anything. About losing your progress, I suggest looking into a versioning control system. Since you are the only one working on a project it might work for you. Either git or svn will do the trick.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_%28software%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Subversion