“.. sede vacantism is not the way to go...”
I do realize this and appreciate your advice. It becomes harder for me as I see the disasters of the novus ordo and Vatican II play out - very bad fruit abounds. There is a piusV church community with 45 minutes from me and I have been tempted to join and haven’t. Our local novus ordo is dreadful. The priest add libs the eucharistic prayers and omits the creed, for starters. However, I do have a Latin mass and other options that have not rejected the pope’s authority and I won’t take that extreme step, but I understand why some do.
Don’t rule out sedevacantism until you have done your own complete research. Most folks who stick their nose up at it really don’t know much about it at all. It is a scary route to take for sure, but we are in scary times. Even though I come off as a sedevacantist myself I still wrestle with it, but I can accept it much easier than accepting a heretical pope or more. It makes much more sense to me to conclude that the chair is currently empty than obeying a heretical pope (and the heretical teachings that flowed from VII).
In the end, it’s not as easy as saying “it’s not the way to go”.