I have this uncle, an airline pilot, who developed a bitterness habit, characterized by What’s-the-Use-type exclamations, that roughly – well, alright, exactly – coincided with the moment our Congress allowed the airline and union to dissolve his pension. *poof*

It happened just a few short years before the forced-retirement phase of his 37-year career. He found himself booted out of Happy Retirement Land (where your income and health care coverage are guaranteed to sustain life), dragging his own luggage into Retirement? What Retirement? Welcome to Super*Mart-Ville.

Most of us know the place, I suspect.

He eventually landed a job with a corporate jet company. Nice job, good folks. Layoff. He’s unemployed again … and happier than he’s been since being a pilot was just a wish he made on birthday candles.

Why’s that? Well, because there are certain upsides to unemployment. If you’re unemployed, you know what I’m talking about: when one lacks a certain degree of control, one sometimes experiences the same free-wheeling, “what the heck” euphoria that drives a kid to buy another ticket to ride the triple-loop coaster.

You can’t help it. For every day when you re-connect with the reality that $300-a-week unemployment income won’t keep you in lattes and designer clothes … or a house … there comes another day when you laugh and tell your niece how beautiful the Blue Ridge Mountains appear from the back of a motorcycle.

So, Mike and I had one of those days recently; and we took our misguided joie de vie to see the new Harry Potter movie.

Alright, here’s the humiliating truth: I’m a PotHead. Yes, I read literature and recognize the clear limits of J.K. Rowling’s prose, just as any good cocktail-party-intellectual would do – but, honestly? The woman created a fabulous world, and I am awe-struck by the achievement and a devoted (and detail-oriented) fan. Wish I could pass that off as my eight year-old’s obsession, not mine, but I can’t. Have to own it, so I am.

Perhaps that is why I felt so ruthlessly betrayed, when, in the very first scene of the movie, the moguls-that-be showed Harry trying to pick up a busty waitress in a whistle stop café.

I didn’t actually yell “WHAT THE—?!?” in the theater, because I think that might be illegal behavior (and I can’t afford the ticket just now), but I was sure thinking it. They changed Harry Potter’s character.

They did it in the last scene, too – and I won’t mention how, because I hate to be a spoiler, but my fellow Potheads will know the problem when they see it.

They changed the character. How dare they do that?

I was moody (not the Mad-Eye sort, either) for the rest of the day. In fact, I’m still perturbed. But it made me think: here we are, at a coming-of-age junction (of sorts) with Whistle Corps. I have to grow the business, have to do it quickly, and that necessitates some changes: opening new markets, marketing with some renewed verve and enforcing some policies that I’m not used to being a stickler about.

But I’d better stay true to our character while we do it. We have clients we’ve been working with for ten years, in some cases. They know what to expect from us: they know our values and service standards. We’re like Hogwarts! Alright, maybe that last part is all in my mind, but, if I change the character of our business just to grow the franchise … well, people are known to walk out on that sort of thing.

We started this blog to talk about low-cost but cost-effective ways that small business owners can market their companies. It’s an interesting enough subject but, as it turns out, not enough to fuel the “I swear to blog weekly” ambitions I thought I had.

I find myself distracted by events and circumstances: a crippled national economy as it impacts people I know; profit-driven insurance conglomerates that inject themselves, insidiously, into our everyday decisions; indescribably brave, green-clad individuals who move me to evaluate the sacrifices I am prepared to make for my family, and for freedom.

As an advisor to small business owners, it is almost incumbent upon me to talk about using social networking sites to expand your reach, monitor what customers are saying about you, control your brand—blah, blah. In reality, I think Twitter is the dumbest thing that any less-than-utterly-narcissistic person could ever do. Honestly? You want your every unfiltered, truncated, grammatically-incorrect thought out there for any client – any human being – to see? I hope not. If you do, then I don’t want to know you. (For the record, blogging isn’t much better. The audience size for the average blog? One.)

But I would dutifully recite its purported value to any client for whom social media, Twitter included, makes sense. It would probably even make a good blog topic. The fact is, I never saw the purpose or true value of the thing until I stumbled on the #IranElection channel. Now that, I sincerely believe, matters.

Don’t get me wrong: small business matters, too. So many of us rely on it for income, for employment, for the health and security of our families. But where we used to farm the land, build tangible products, trust our future to pensions; nowadays ideas are our seedlings, services our products and the future uncertain to a degree that it simply wasn’t before. Given this, how do we keep ourselves (and subsequently, our businesses) connected to real things?

I’m not sure.

My husband was laid off the other day. He is our primary earner, the source of health insurance and retirement savings (what’s left of them). We formed this company solely to pay our daughter’s school tuition … and in preparation for the arrival of this inevitable day (because layoffs are a reality of modern working life that no exertion of effort or dedication will delay) when we require a ready-in-the-works backup plan. Small ambitions, until now.

Now, our business plan changes – under duress maybe, but still, it changes – and we navigate the tumultuous waters of unemployment, health care and growing a small business in the ugly face of a down economy.

We’re hopeful. We see this as an opportunity to do anything, to live more authentically in our personal and professional lives. And what I’m going to do is blog it: because our real-life challenges can maybe produce some workable ideas that will help you face yours.

We’re starting ankle-deep in septic water. We were, quite literally, mopping the mess with every towel we no longer own, when his boss called with the news. Tuition is due tomorrow, and that’s all of our savings. No credit cards, and about 30% of our accounts receivable are more than 50-days overdue.

I hate to do it, but I guess that’s where we start.

Things are just not that great right now. Perhaps, like me, you feel as if your already-small business is shrinking with the GNP, while the gaps in your safety net (home equity, IRA, etc.) continue to widen with every awful news cycle.

I find myself, lately, ground to stasis by the national misery: depleted of the alternative energy I need to fuel those rainy-day projects that really ought to get done (e.g., address my pathetically incomplete LinkedIn profile); finding funny dog videos more enthralling by the second. At least the geniuses at AIG are alright. Whew.

When business is slow and days … are … slow … motivation is first to go.

It’s the Great Small Business Depression. We’re in it. I’m talking psychological reality, people, not economic reality. But the reality of psychological reality is that we control our own. That means that there is something you can do today to positively affect the state of your small business.

A colleague (and prolific video link source) wrote yesterday:

“I read an article in the May issue of More magazine. I tracked down one of the women in the article through LinkedIn. We exchanged emails, talked on the phone for 45-minutes and are meeting next week for lunch.”

Will anything come of this meeting?

Something already has!

Mary Kay, with one bold action, injected a massive dose of capital into her personal stimulus plan. She wrote New Deal for her business.

There were no funny dog videos in my inbox this morning.

Here’s how she ended:

“Now, it's your turn to do something daring.”

That’s a challenge to all of us, people. What will we dare to attempt today?