Yeah, but how do you set the value? Creating a variable does nothing without setting the value and you do not set it. Are you not getting any errors?
At some point you said this was printing OK:
But you’re not accessing this widget at all, judging by this:
Are you, perhaps, using a widget component? And then create another widget that simply overlaps it?
Which widget is this variable pointing to:

Because it’s not pointing to this one:


