Thank you everybody for great advice. I have tried to make the new project look more interesting, and not something I wanted to do just to graduate, and my supervisor seems to be warming up to the idea. I am also trying to keep positive and think this is not the end of the world. Just a little bit more patience and persistence. PhDs really are big learning experiences, not only about the research topic and the scientific method but mainly about our own limits...
Thanks once again!(up)

Hello everybody,
Hope you can help me out here. Or at least offer some other points of view.
I am currently a 5th year PhD student in a school in NY. I have yet to publish a paper (and still have not enough data to do so) and I keep seeing the finish line farther and farther away.
How did I get here? Sometimes I ask myself the same thing... Since I am in a US PhD program, my first year was spent with classes and trying to find the lab for my project. My second year, having chosen a supervisor, was spent trying to figure out what my project would be. This was because my supervisor has a very hands off approach to "mentoring". He wanted the idea for the project to come from me, not him. It's a great thing, but very daunting for somebody that didn't know the field so well... It took me a while and he did help somewhat.
The next year I spent piloting the big bulky Specific Aim 1, which involved behavioral experiments with animals that don't always do what you wish they'd do... I finally figured out a way to answer the question I had. But I was doing this in facilities that belonged to another lab. Therefore, the next step was to find a place for me to do the long term experiments. However, on my fourth year, my supervisor communicated to us that he had decided to take a position in another institution. My options were: go with him or stay and change labs and start on a completely new project. Since I was already on my fourth year I decided to go with him (sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had chosen the other option... blue pill, red pill).
Anyway, since I wouldn't be able to start the behavior experiments right before we moved, I picked up a side project on a theme that the lab had recently started to work on. We moved last summer (Aug 08) and things have been quite slow... We had to set up the lab from almost scratch and I have only started my behavior experiments this month (April 09). My side project has been going, but all the data seem to be negative (still publish-able, but very unimpressive).
The thing is, I have realized now, that it's gonna take a really long time to finish the behavioral experiments, more than I would like to be here (I told my supervisor that I would come if he thought it was possible for me to graduate by the summer of 2010). My conservative estimate is that I would be finished by the fall of 2011 - more than 7 years for a PhD. I have suggested to my supervisor that I'd change that aim, but he really didn't like the idea. Said that we had planned this for a while and that I knew what I was proposing when I did (although I proposed it when I was in my 3rd year, when time issues were different).
I also don't really like to live where I live, feel quite lonely here and overworked. I'm starting to think life isn't supposed to be this hard and thinking of quitting (I'd leave with a Masters). But at the same time I feel like I've invested too much to just drop it...
Any thoughts or advice?