I've got a new tool I'm going to try out during my Monday morning workout: a metronome. It occurred to me the other day as I shadowboxed out of necessity as my MMA gloves are too light for the heavy bag and tears my knuckles up as I Rocky my morning.

I was doing it to a synthwave playlist and it matched up to my strikes. I suspect a metronome would match up nicely to that activity along with a host of others.

I do this one exercise where the whole movement is basically a core workout, something akin to blocking and striking at the same time without any sort of extension:

• Left forearm strike to the top
• Right upwards elbow strike to the torso
• Left upwards elbow strike to the torso
• Right forearm strike to the top

After the interval set/rest, I'll flip to southpaw and repeat—anyway, all of that would work great to the rhythm of a metronome. They're easy to find. As I don't want it to mess up my music or HIIT counter, I can bring a laptop into the workout and just google "metronome" and BAM Google provides one.

I remain brainstorming a new iron-less workout. I've only been putting in an hour each day, as I've put much more time into 1) daily meditation and 2) visualization mediation—20 minutes each!

Thus, I'm mindmapping something together. To kickoff a fresh start, I've abandoned my old friend of Freemind and downloaded a free copy of XMind.

When I have something in place, I'm sure to post it on this site, though this site could very well be hosted on GitHub Pages by then. I remain researching a way I can best integrate it. I'm beginning to really enjoy Markdown.

I may return to Facebook toward the end of this year, if for anything else, to catch up with old friends and play Mark Morrison's Return of the Mack (OK, so that song just happens to be playing as I typing to the Billboard Hits of 1997).

My recent adoption of gamification continues to pay off toward my fitness improvements and general approach to life. More importantly, it propels me to ask if a specific goal contributes to my vision. It's even opened up new possibilities.

It reminds me of a time back in 2001 as I was finishing up college and the employment search thereafter. I spent many hours with the companions of cup and coffee and a tablet of paper. Dreaming, thinking, planning and dreaming some more. I'd like to think I haven't lost that spirit, but admittedly, there are times when my vision gets out-of-focus. One year winds up looking a lot like the prior and so it goes as the years reel on.

Of course, it's hard to understand exactly what I want out of life, because that changes. Things that I targeted at 22 and 23 runs counter to my mind at 42 toward 43.

Yet, I remain the same person, even if my purpose has shifted. And even back then, I worked toward fitness, though I did not possess the today's tools and knowledge. That is the way of things.

In some ways, the world is so much smaller than it was then, now I've traveled a bit. Yet, it seems bigger as I don't feel tied down by the same paradigms that I once did.

Admittedly, my sudden ramp-up of physical activity has caused all the fun that you might expect from a 0-to-60 explosion of iron. I still need to sit back and examine how different exercises promote my destination—YES, I suppose you can't go wrong with an increased amount of physical exercise, but does a resistance program match up with what I want?

I want enhanced dexterity, agility, and stamina. Do weights promote that? —bodyweight, sure, but, I never go away from my dumbbells feeling more adroit. Hulk smash, yes. But, your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man? I don't need spidey sense to answer that!

No, while I've done my share of DB sets, ultimately, I'm going to have to replace them with something far more pragmatic. Visualization/meditation, yoga, martial arts, body weight training, and cardio equipment make sense.

Look, if all of these workouts are about optimizing my body's ability, then I should focus on optimizing my body's ability. Fitness isn't about profile pictures.