For slow agency

This essay proposes hypermiling as a generative metaphor for WPA work. By building on the idea that slowing down decreases energy consumption and increases resource preservation, I introduce alternative ways to think about WPA agency, giving serious attention to the arts of productive stillness, resource preservation, and slowness--what is called "gradual arrival" in the hypermiling movement. My aim is to illustrate that agency operates on a continuum including action and change as well as less visible but no less important forms of agency like thinking, being still, and processing. The essay ends with a reflective look at an object passed down from previous WPAs in my department, an object that offers a different but tangential metaphor for reconsidering pace and action.