(FORTUNE Small Business) – Entrepreneurs just adore change. They devour adversity. They embrace chaos. Everyone knows that. About 18 months ago, when C. Jane Smith described her business to me, she spoke in terms of being "flexible and cutting-edge, and amenable to thinking quickly on our feet" and appreciating that "there is nothing stagnant about what we do." Now, on this morning in mid-September, she sounds different. "I could be out of business or I could be very busy," she says, trying to sort out her architectural firm's future. "There's this great sense of not really knowing what's coming next."

Perhaps it goes without saying that Smith's 18-employee firm, Harris Smith Design, is based in downtown Manhattan, in the flatiron district. She watched the World Trade Center towers crumble on her way to work, and she has lost her entrepreneurial bearings without them. Other entrepreneurs like her everywhere seemed to have lost their way too. The gung-ho attitude that marked them all in the '90s has withered in the face of the WTC tragedy and the sharp economic downturn--which many have never experienced before--or both. "Yes, this is an economic opportunity for us," says Smith, 48, a native of Wyoming. "Well, maybe it is. Or maybe not."

In the 13 years since she co-founded the firm, she has forcefully guided it through several wrenching transitions. Originally she and her partner designed offices for Fortune 100 clients. Then in 1999, equipped with 7,000 square feet of funky loft space and new financing from an old friend--and having split with her partner, who didn't share her risky notions--she set out to become the premier architect for the dot-com crowd. She felt a kinship with that group's sensibility: hip, high-energy, sophisticated. She shared their penchant for open ceilings, hardwood floors, and flexible spaces. One dot-com startup was acquired before she could finish its offices; she worked with another whose young founders she never met. "Everything changes all the time," she said back then. With glee. Now, as she reels off her client list--goofy names like Method5.com and Pseudo Programs--she lets her voice trail off when she gets to Trading Edge Inc. The Internet-based bond-trading service, which has since been acquired, occupies 26,000 square feet of space near Wall Street. The space she designed featured glass fronts on the offices and soft interior lighting. "Now it's under siege," she says. "I can't get through to anybody there."

Smith doesn't pretend that her story, no matter how it ends, should earn her any sympathy. Like everybody in New York City, she knows people who've suffered much worse fates. Over the summer she tried to woo a client that occupied space atop one of the World Trade Center's towers. "I came in contact with those people, and many of them are lost now," she says. She had been disappointed when she didn't get the job. And she was none too pleased, back in the fall of 2000, when it became apparent to her that her core dot-com clients were evaporating. Her reaction? She embraced her dot-com past, assuring a new cost-conscious and practical group of clients that "if we can do what we did for the dot-coms from scratch, we can take those spaces we built and modify them to work for your company." She also sought out public-sector clients she'd previously served, such as schools.

And now, who knows? She's hoping the firm might get tied up in helping rebuild the city. But many of the displaced organizations, she's sure, have existing relationships with big architects. Two days after the attack, she has begun contacting companies that might need her services. But do they? She doesn't know, she really doesn't know. That's something, maybe the first thing, she wasn't prepared for. Entrepreneurs aren't supposed to feel this way--out of control. "When you first start a business, you think, 'If I had only made ten more sales calls, maybe I would have gotten a job today,' but now I can only do what I can do," Smith explains. "It's out of my power."