Pagan studies rant - please excuse :P

In preparation for finishing this next chapter about the Pagan movement I have been entering my ridiculously-huge collection of articles, chapters, theses, books, etc into Zotero for easy reference and as a review of what I have. As a habit, whenever I encounter an article or such that I might potentially find useful "one day" I used to save it. (That was before Zotero. Now I could just save the data about the article if it seemed peripheral and less likely I'd ever read it.) Consequently, I have a huge collection of articles in both print and electronic format. How huge? So far I'm at 90 items tagged with "Paganism" in my Zotero files and I'm not done entering data.
Of these, 26 are graduate thesis documents (which reminds me I've not entered my own thesis yet).
I'd like to send out a notice to all graduate students (especially at the Masters level) considering a study of Paganism - the ethnography of Paganism/Wicca/Witchcraft has been done! Honest, you really don't need to write the same thing about modernity/postmodernity, institutionalization, identity issues, nature religion, ecology... can we please try for something insightful?
Some of the works are good. There is one in particular that I really wish the author would have pushed for publication. But most of it makes me want to pull my hair out. I realize much of this comes from shared conversations that were being engaged in the field of Pagan Studies as it developed. Thus I understand the multiplicity of research on a given topic. I also know I have the benefit of hindsight to observe many papers over a long period of time. What irks me are the papers that were published well after the original discussion - papers that don't contribute anything new. These are old theses - they're new (recent), well, except that their content isn't new in the least. In particular though, I'm appalled at what passes for acceptable research at the graduate level...
Are my standards too high? Am I pushing myself too hard to develop a meaningful, insightful dissertation? Probably. That is, upon reading other PhD level theses I'm quite certain I could get away with less. I could have simply written up the results of my fieldwork even though by my own standards (and those of my supervisors) the sample was fairly small. However, comparing my sample with equivalent works I realized my sample is above-average in size. Instead, dissatisfied by the sample size I sought to redirect my energies into greater theory analysis, using my fieldwork even more so as an illustrative case study (which it already was) and less as the focus of the dissertation. That involved an entirely new and involved immersion in research from the entire range of the social sciences (anthro, psych, soc, and other multi-disciplinary fields). Now I wonder, on a practical level, if I was "wasting" time - not that I truly believe it was a waste. But if I'd just been allowed to accept what research I had gathered as being sufficient to secure my PhD a year ago, well I could have. Looking at other similar works, I realize now I could have done it.
Ah, but that was a year ago. And I could never be satisfied with less than the best from myself. Thus, here I am still wanting to make sure I've covered every angle; making sure I'm aware of all the relevant discussions about the Pagan movement as I finish the chapter on the topic.

And, in the end, I'll know "I did it!"

Why the reflection? I've been doing it a lot lately. But last night I was reading an interesting article in the Chronicles of Higher Education about incomplete PhDs. The author encourages supervisors to have meaningful discussions with their students to make sure the students actually want to complete the program - and to realize that ABD doesn't have to mean that your life is incomplete.
Which isn't to say I'm giving up on my completed PhD! There's no way I'm giving up the work I love. Even though it's slowed by the child I love more. And even though the job market is crap and I know it. I'll figure something out... I'm pretty darn innovative. And determined when I set my mind to it. (I heard that! Yes, I can be stubborn.)

Anyhow, my work on religious socialization and revising how this is approached and studied, I believe, will give me plenty to work with in the coming years.