Or perhaps it's 'afraid to succeed'. Either way, I don't understand it at all. There are so many idiomatic phrases like that that I just can't fathom once I try for a moment.

I don't think I've ever understood the explanation (of failure, especially failure of talented or capable people) that some people are 'afraid of success'.

Dizzee Rascal just made a kung fu noise. Then he said yee-haw.

Things are not going well. They were going so well yesterday.

Boy, you act like I need ya / can't get with amnesia

I direct your attention to Otis Wheeler's page. Yes, that Otis Wheeler.

From Geoff, a phrase I must record for posterity, regarding The West Wing: 'the pornography of competency'. Oh yes.

'They are playing a game. They are playing at not
playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I
shall break the rules and they will punish me.
I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.'

Unleashing some Socratic-Platonic shit on your ass: if you understand why or how something is valuable, then you value it. Therefore if you do not value it, you do not understand it.

I hope the paper I have been working on for almost two years (more if you count, like, the 23 years of my life leading up to that point, ha) does not simply boil down to me believing this. I mean, it seems like a nice belief to have. But a tough one to support. At least now maybe I can be direct about it. Aside from being direct having the consequence of making me entirely fucking rewrite my fucking paper. By which I mean my plan for my paper (of which there are now eighty-two). Since I have not yet, technically, 'written' 'a' 'paper'.