Working vs Staying at Home

I am jealous of all of those stay at home moms who enjoy this task. Look at my past half year, and follow my posts, and you can tell that I find it very difficult. I am not interested in shopping, decorating the home, thinking about what wonders to cook for the evening, and drinking coffee with other stay-at-home moms. It may sound ideal to some, I feel I have been at a low point with these tasks. I feel better now that I at least have a newspaper again, and although the working world is not connected to me, I am at least following what is happening in it. For my self-esteem, I still need two things. 1) I need to belong. This means that I need an identity other than motherhood. Self-fulfilling selfhood is not my strength - I will not pick up French vocabulary books and paint my way through the day, popping into art galeries in between. I will also not volunteer for Save the Children stalls. I wish I could, but I know myself to know I wont. My self-worth depends on (wrongly or rightly is irrelevant) having achieved something with all that I have invested into my studies and career so far: the "next step". 2) I need my own income. I need to know it is coming not from childcare, cleaning, cooking or other, but from point 1 before. Again wrongly or rightly, I feel that I need to see a reard for all these years of investments. Or 3) I need to manage go change my entire attitude to staying at home. I'm not sure that's possible, nor am I sure that I would want to. Having taken the path I have taken has been my choice, it has fit my interests and character, and provided a feeling of worth and success. Status as well. Am I willing to give this up? No. No. And no.