anyone actually making a sitemap successfully?

What's the site built on? On WordPress you almost never make one by hand: core has one at /wp-sitemap.xml, and if Yoast or Rank Math is installed it's /sitemap_index.xml instead. Open that URL in a browser first and check it loads. Then paste just that path into Search Console under Sitemaps. The bit that catches people out is submitting the full URL for the wrong version of the domain (www vs non-www, http vs https), so make sure it matches the property. And a sitemap doesn't force indexing, it just helps Google find pages, so couldn't fetch or discovered but not indexed are separate issues.