What duh is up with private repo access and upstream pushes?

Searched around everywhere for this issue, and followed to a T how to set up a local repo and push it to a private repo on Gitlab.

did this:

git config --local user.name "username"
git config --local user.email "my@email.com"

then this:

git init --initial-branch=main
git remote add origin git@gitlab.com:white5moke/myproj.git
git add .
git commit -m "Initial commit"

but when I run this:
git push --set-upstream origin main

I get:

remote:
remote: ========================================================================
remote: ERROR: The project you were looking for could not be found or you don't have permission to view it.
remote:
remote:

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.

It exists, but set to private. I am the owner, and have my SSH keys all set up correctly.

Tested with:
ssh -T git@gitlab.com

and get:
Welcome to GitLab, @white5moke!

I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong here.