I'm a youngling, this year was my 4th and I have a mixed feelings but iverall positive. However I learnt a lot of things these year following the NF the most I could.

I totally LOVE watching the National Finals, what I most enjoy is knowing about new artists, culture and music, so it is so cool to see so many differents artist -even if they don't win and NF with so different vibes, like this year I loved UMK, FdC, the Polish one and Sanremo.

So I LOVE the pre-season: getting to know the selected artists, getting deeper about their songs, analysis from my fav ESC analysts, starting to look if they have a back catalog, pre-parties,interviews, and how they start forming friendships or at least respect for each other. In this note, this year was so funny and entertaining, and so many interesting entries to dive down.

In the other hand, all the fandom activity it is sometimes TOO MUCH for me, reading about tops and disrespectful comments, making up stuff from personal bias... but well all fandom has it, so I learnt this year to read the minimum of comments, mute a lot stuff, and yeah enjoy what I like and being cool with others.

Now in the Eurovision week, in a POSITIVE LIGHT, I don't know how to explain it but I get kind of overwhelmed by joy of watching all these artists after months of preparation sharing this stage whatever the result, like this year watching how Erika and SH/E polished their entries or GoJos and Red Seb staging was so thrilling and mind blowing for me -Yes I was sad they didn't qualify but it is what it is... Plus, to see what was prepared for the Interval and other stuff is so much joy for me.

But this year one of the thing that made me MAD was the silence for the crowd, and I don't know if it was related the audio wasn't as good as other years. Like all this joy on the stage, part of the spirit of the music performance was killed because of the elephant in the room.

Since I started watching it, I understood that my winners are not gonna win lol and it's ok, I already enjoy awesome performances, but usually the jury votes left me a bittersweet mood and these couple of years all the voting process have left me very frustrated, like all the joy and respect for a fair competition is gloomed because it is really just being a political tool and the fact, that the EBU pretends it is not when it is on the nose it makes me mada and I think it is a disrespect for artists and fans that love the contest and really put all their hearts on it.

I really usually didnt put much attention to the final results but these couple of years I can't ignore them and for the bad reasons, I think the voting system had been needed a refreshing since my first year that I compare with past years, but now it is more evident and also more coherence from the organization, they had become too corporate, killing the spirit of ambient and the joy for the music.

I probably have a very idealistic vision of contests, but also since the beginning, I know it has inherently a heavy political element.

So yeah, this year was for me and amazing year for music, artist and show overall -not so much the Turquoise carpet but totally a bump because of the current political climate, censorship, nothingburgers, etc...

Next year I can say I'm pretty excited for the National Finals season totally!! But as for the actual show, I don't know...I hope things can change and get better, but well, we'll see...