Taking Work Home

This entry will pretty much be a clarification of the title. I've been working at Toyon as a full time employee for about six months now and I have never done any of my work anywhere except at work. I somewhat hope to keep that boundary, although I may let it slide as long as it doesn't mean the rest of my life is being pushed out for the sake of work. In any case, that is a question for another time.

I've always been fairly happy that whatever is going on at work I can just leave there emotionally at the end of the day. This week has marked the first time when I've really been preoccupied about work outside of work. One of the parts of working at Toyon is writing proposals for SBIR contracts. They come out four times a year, and we are encouraged to write for them. Internally we have a review process for which the drafts are due Monday morning. I'm writing my first proposal this round, and it's been taking up a lot of my time and has been somewhat overwhelming. Another downside of the whole process is that we are only funded for a limited amount of time on it. Any additional time you put in is on your own time*, although it is expected that you will keep working on it until you have something worth turning in. I am already past my limit, and I suspect that by the time I'm done I will have put in at least a couple days worth of my own time on it. The combination of my first deadline, not really enjoying technical writing to begin with, and being over my paid time limit has certainly contributed to my general outlook outside of work. The bright side is that I am learning from this experience, and I should be able to write my next one much more quickly, perhaps even within the budgeted time.

*: If you win a proposal you get a bonus, so assuming you win some that you wouldn't if you stopped when you ran out of paid time, then you are still getting paid for time above and beyond. I also want to note that I'm somewhat mixed on this policy. Although I don't want to get into why, I can understand reasons to keep it in place.