Well, showing is always a little different from real life.
My philosophy, which applies to bonsai as well as a number of other pursuits, is "Learn the rules so that you can break them with purpose." It's something I was taught in a poetry lesson sometime back in school, and it comes to mind every time I see someone post "Is this a bonsai?" or when someone declares that they don't care what anyone says, their plant is "a bonsai." The first group (who ask "is this a bonsai?") are still trying to figure out which rules are integral to the process and outcome of bonsai, vs. which ones can be bent or broken. The second group have decided that the rules don't matter, they like the idea of "a bonsai" and it makes them happy to think they have "a bonsai."
In real life, you learn the rules and then you learn to break them, and along the way, you learn what processes and outcomes you love and which ones you don't (and which of the ones you don't love, you have to do anyway).
In showing, there is an additional set of rules to learn, because to be successful, you have to create the things that other people love. I don't love competing in general; it is sometimes interesting to test something I have created or a skill that I have learned against others, but it isn't important to me. For other people, shows are important and that's cool too.
Which is to say, in my opinion, all that the lack of show attention says about your tastes is that you like some trees that have not, thus far, gained much attention at shows.
