New year's resolution: slower, kinder, less performing. That's the whole plan.

New Year's Resolution: Slower, Kinder, Less Performing. That's the Whole Plan.

There's a moment I keep returning to. Not a dramatic one. I'd taken my clothes off at the top of a quiet beach in the off-season, early enough that the sand was still cold under my feet, and I stood there a while before walking down to the water. Nobody was watching. Nobody was going to. And still some part of me straightened my shoulders, pulled my stomach in, arranged my arms like I was being photographed.

Performing doesn't stop just because the audience leaves. That's what I've learned.

So this year I'm not making a list. No cold plunges at five in the morning, no language-app streak, no arbitrary number of books. My resolution fits into one sentence and it's written on a scrap of paper taped to the inside of my wardrobe door, which feels like the correct place for it — I see it every morning while I'm deciding what to put on.

Slower. Kinder. Less performing.

That's it. That's the whole plan.

I'm not turning this into a project

The temptation, of course, is to systemise it. Make a spreadsheet. Score myself. Twelve weeks to a calmer me.

I've done that before and it always ends the same way: the plan becomes another thing to fail at, failing becomes another reason to be hard on myself, and being hard on myself is the exact habit I'm trying to put down. So no metrics this year. No tracking app. Just a direction of travel, and a willingness to notice when I've drifted off it.

Slower

Naturism taught me this one without asking permission.

You can't rush the first ten minutes of being naked outdoors in January. The body complains. The skin reports every degree. There's a shiver, a tightening, a moment of why am I doing this — and then, if you stay with it, something settles. The breath drops lower. The shoulders come down. The world gets a bit louder and a bit more interesting: wind in the pines, a dog barking two fields away, the sound your own feet make on wet sand.

I want that patience in the rest of my life. I want to eat a meal without a screen. I want to walk somewhere without a podcast filling the silence in. I want to answer a message tomorrow instead of in ninety seconds.

Being naked is a slow practice, and I think that's part of why it's good for me. There's nothing to achieve. You take everything off and then you simply have to be there, in a body, in weather, with time.

Kinder

I have a voice in my head that does running commentary in front of mirrors. You probably know the one. It's fluent, it's fast, and it has never once said anything I'd say out loud to a friend.

I've spent years learning not to flinch at myself — in photographs, in changing rooms, in the long mirror at the gym. I've got better at it. Better isn't the same as finished.

Here's what I've come to believe: kindness toward your own body isn't the same as liking everything about it. It's refusing to keep score. It's not letting a number on a scale become a verdict on your week. It's letting a photograph exist without auditing it.

And kindness goes outward too. In naturist spaces it looks like consent, and privacy, and reading the room. It looks like not assuming anyone else's comfort level. It looks like a hello, and space, and letting someone be new without making them feel new.

Less performing

This is the hard one, because I do it for a living now.

I take photographs of myself, I write about my life, I put it online — and somewhere in all of that there's a fork in the road: am I doing this because it's true, or because it will land well? The angle that flatters. The towel arranged just so. The caption written to be shared.

I've written before about ethical nude photography, and the distinction I keep coming back to is between a photograph and a pose held for approval. One is a record of a moment. The other is a small negotiation with an imagined audience.

Nudity is supposed to be where I stop doing that. It's the place where there's nothing left to arrange. And yet I can still catch myself sucking in my stomach on an empty beach.

So the test I'm using this year is a simple one: would I do this if nobody saw it? If the answer is no, I try to pay attention to why.

What it actually looks like

Small things, mostly. Unglamorous.

• Leaving my phone in the other room when I get changed.
• Walking to the water without the ten-second hesitation at the edge.
• Saying "I don't know" instead of producing a confident answer I haven't earned.
• Not apologising when I take up space on a train seat.
• Going to the beach out of season, when it's me and the gulls and nobody's photographing anything.
• Sitting with a friend in silence instead of filling it.

None of this will make a good before-and-after photo. That's sort of the point.

What I'm not doing

I'm not chasing a better body. I've watched enough people in naturist spaces to know that the bodies on display there are ordinary, varied, unretouched and completely fine — and that the pursuit of a "better" one is a subscription you can't cancel.

I'm not pretending any of this is easy. Slowness is boring for the first month. Kindness toward yourself feels fake before it feels normal.

And I'm not turning naturism into a competition about who is most free. There's a strange hierarchy that creeps into these circles, where being more naked, more often, more publicly becomes a scoreboard. I'd rather be quiet and honest than impressive.

If you're writing your own

One practical thing, because I get asked. If your version of slower involves being naked outside, check the rules where you are first. Find a designated beach, a club, a private garden, a friend's land. Go with people who understand what no means, and leave if the mood is wrong. Freedom that ignores other people isn't freedom, it's just noise.

And one softer thing. You don't have to announce your resolution. You don't have to post about it, or make it a word, or explain it to anyone. Some things grow better in the quiet.

That's the plan

Slower. Kinder. Less performing.

Three words on a scrap of paper, taped inside a wardrobe door, next to the clothes I'll wear less than I used to.

I'll get it wrong plenty. I'll rush, I'll be harsh with myself, I'll pose for a photograph that isn't quite true. Then I'll come back to the sentence, take a breath, and start again — which, now I think about it, is also how the first ten minutes on a cold beach go.

Thank you for being here. Truly.

— Will