The author of the text is monitoring MySQL throughput to gain insight into traffic and identify potential problems before they occur. They are using Chronograf, a data visualization tool, to monitor their MySQL database and understand how it's performing. The author starts by visualizing questions and queries in Chronograf, which helps them see trends and anomalies in their traffic. They then investigate the cause of an anomaly in their queries, using InfluxQL to query their data and gain insights into reads per second. Despite facing several personal failures along the way, the author is able to use throughput monitoring to gain valuable insights into their MySQL database's performance.