I don't think you want to use the double colon keyword, and why does node need to be derefed?

oh in my case I wait to init the database until when it's needed, so I stick it in an atom

I do this with integrant but I just def the node later instead of putting it in an atom

IDK why I put it in the atom, except I think in theory it lets me re-start the node if it fails in some later setup

But it turns out I can noop a tx fn with a [] return, so that's pretty great