Not just you.

Also, I always have this vague fear that I'll rsync in the wrong direction, or accidentally blow away unrelated files in rsync's efforts to fully synchronize two directories (can't remember if this is a valid concern).

I'm sure these concerns would go away if I used it regularly, but I just don't. ‘cp' or ’scp’ almost always meet my needs.

Kinda like the way people are probably right that I should learn to use ’awk’, but I just can't muster the motivation.

Do it once, make it your muscle memory - it's really hard for me to learn things by heart, but even I could do it :), and then you can forget about scp as well