The journey of entrepreneurship trains you to live with uncertainty. When you start a business, you are filled with excitement. What you do not know is that there will be many twists and turns ahead.

When you realise that the opportunity is not as profitable as you had hoped, uncertainty sets in. You learn that it’s much harder to manage a business than it is to start one.

Five years ago, I started my laundry business in Nyanga, near Cape Town. You would think this was long enough for me to get used to the feeling of rootlessness. You would think that it gets easier. It doesn’t.

The biggest lesson I have learned is from observing customer behaviour. Sometimes, someone will enquire about my laundry service and sound certain that they will be making their way to my business place, only to change their mind.

Sadly, when they change their minds, they never contact me to let me know they are no longer interested in using my service.

Having an elderly mother who lives far from me has also created uncertainty in my life. If I get a phone call that my mother is not well, I may not immediately be able to visit her. This causes me a lot of anxiety.

My mother is 69 years old and sickly. I cannot book a one-way ticket and settle in a foreign country, to seek better opportunities. I do not want to receive a phone call while I’m far away from home, telling me to come back because something has happened to my mother.

This uncertainty keeps the ground under my feet shallow. It’s worse than the uncertainty caused by the economic challenges I’m facing.

Childlessness also brings a sense of uncertainty, because I don’t know what life will be like when I’m older.

I feel a sense of dread when I think about getting older. It’s a subtle fear that I will have no one to take care of me, as I care for my mother when she is not well.

Even though I have lived alone most of my adult life, when I get sick, fear comes to the fore. It’s on these days that uncertainty about life settles on me like a heavy blanket.

I don’t know how to combat or overcome this. I think it will be a present companion for all my days. This daily dread, as subtle as it is, makes me appreciate life more.

As a person who is prone to worry and anxiety, I am learning to trust in a higher power and take it one day at a time. In hindsight, entrepreneurship teaches me to go with the flow, instead of resisting.