Hello mcaongusa, and welcome to the Monastery!

I can't figure out what I am doing wrong.

If a my declaration occurs in an eval, its scope extends only to the end of that eval. From the documentation for my:

A my declares the listed variables to be local (lexically) to the enclosing block, file, or eval.

But anyway, as 1nickt and hippo have said, what you’re trying to do is a bad idea, and there are better approaches.

Hope that helps,