Hi everyone.

I know that many have faced this dilemma during the course of their PhD so I'm just looking for some wisdom.

I am currently in the middle of the fourth year of my part-time PhD (humanities) and I have seriously hit a wall. I don't mean 'struggling to make progress' or 'things are a bit difficult at the moment,' I mean I've actually hit the wall, slid down and I'm just sitting there on the ground feeling sorry for myself. I haven't made any proper progress is months.

I don't know if part of the problem is the length of time I've been working on this and the fact that it has been a very drawn out process but I just seem to have lost all enthusiasm. I simply just don't care about it anymore in the way that I once did. I'm not planning to go into academia so the PhD was never something I've been counting on career-wise. It was always just interest.

My dilemma is that I feel like I've done so much work and spent so much money and time that I should just keep going to finish. It would be a bit of a waste to just throw it all away at this point. At the same time, that push to actually get to the end is going to take a lot of effort, effort that I'm just not sure I have. How do you determine if it's just a longer than usual slump vs. actually time to consdier taking a break/giving up on the pursuit?