(...) related to my field anyway, so why force myself through another 3 years of loneliness and frustrating self-discipline? Also, changing career might be easier right now (I'm 29) rather than when I'm 32. One last thing I should mention is that Dutch phd students are normally employed by their university, and I consider myself rather well paid – at least compared to a lot of other jobs.
My plan right now is to take 3 weeks off and return home for christmas, and then hopefully see clearer what my priorities actually are (isolating, frustrating research on an interesting subject vs. friends, family, and perhaps a boring job back home), but I would be SO grateful for any sort of comment on my situation...

I'm in the 2nd year of my phd at Dutch university and I'm seriously considering to quit. I know that it's ultimately up to myself to take that decision, but getting opinions from people in similar situations definitely helps, so whatever suggestion you have would be greatly appreciated. Unlike many people here on the forum my research does not make me feel clinically depressed, it's not THAT bad, but everyday research practice makes me feel slightly frustrated and discontent ALL the time. I really do like my subject (in qualtative social sciences), and I principally like the activities of reading, writing, and discussing, but what kills me is the routine of every research practice, and the force I have to exert on myself to keep it up. I'm actually not good at focussing on my reading (and summarizing of monographs, which is a large part of my work), but I'm really good at forcing myself. So what I do on a regular working day is go to the office, and try to concentrate for 8 -9 hours, of which I succeed to get work done for 4-5 hours on average. And that takes me LOT of disciple. I regularly tend to forget why I actually started to do research, it's like the routine kills any passion I had for my research. I feel that I would be better suited to work in an environment that has shorter project cycles (a couple of weeks or months rather than 4 years).
Additionally, I really miss my friends and family back home. I'm originally from another European country, and I have been abroad for studies (an MPhil at another Dutch university) for 3 years now (I moved three times in that period – I'm sick of that). I've been trying to socialize at my faculty for the past year, but it's hard, and most people here work on really different subjects. So most of the time I'm in my own head, trying to force myself to get work done. To sum up, I really like my subject, but the grind of everyday research practice leaves me frustrated and isolated, and I don't like where I'm living and working.
I'm 14months into the program, so that would be a really good point to quit. On the other hand, I'm really scared of ending up in an underwhelming and boring job back home. A mistake I've made is not to ever have looked for a real job between my degrees (B.A. To Mphil), as I'm the kind of person who always has a plan for what to do next. Therefore I lack the experience of what professional life in fields other than academia can be. A lot of people in my grad school tell me that they are really happy about getting into a phd after having done “regular” jobs, as they found them not challenging enough. I'm scared to quit now and then be hit by the bore of everyday life in a regular job back home. Yet even if I finish the phd, I would like to go back to my country afterwards, and there's very few research jobs in my field (qualitative social sciences – not really the background that gives you a lot of specific choices...). Likely I would be end up in a job that's not related to my f