laravel nova observer trying to get property on non object

I set a database connection by the auth()->user()-dbname This works as desired using this in the model

public function __construct() {
    $this->connection = auth()->user()->dbname;
}

Now I want to observe the model on creation, update, etc. I tried to use

protected static function boot()
{
    parent::boot();

    static::creating(function ($model) {
        $itemIds = $model->item_ids;
        ... update another model based on the $itemIds            
    });

But Nova is not recognizing the static::creating function So I created an Observer (I think a better choice) however when the observer is called it does not recognize the

auth()->user()->dbname property

Why doesn't the observer recognize auth?

via Chebli Mohamed