How to get exception or status after async method is done running in the background?

Here's my code I'm trying to simulate. I can remove the async-await to do "fire and forget", but I'm trying to understand the purpose of asynchronous (NON-BLOCKING) code, but it looks like AWAIT is a blocking code before running the method NextProcess(). If I remove await, it meets my objective, but is there any way to get any sort of exception or status after it's done running in the background?

public static async Task Main()
{
    Console.WriteLine("Starting the long-running process...");

    await Task.Run(() => LongRunningProcess());

    NextProcess();
}

private static void LongRunningProcess()
{
    // Simulating the work being done
    for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++)
    {
        Console.WriteLine(i);
        Thread.Sleep(1000);
    }
}

private static void NextProcess()
{
    Console.WriteLine("In See method, continuation without waiting!");
}

I tried all sorts of permutations of the code I pasted.

> it looks like AWAIT is a blocking code before running the method NextProcess().

You can think of "await" as "asynchronous wait". It does pause the method (i.e., it waits), but doesn't block the thread (i.e., it's asynchronous, not synchronous). You may find my async intro helpful.

> If I remove await, it meets my objective, but is there any way to get any sort of exception or status after it's done running in the background?

Sure; the Task returned from an async method represents the execution of that method. When the method completes, the Task is completed, and if the method throws an exception, the Task is completed with that exception. In this case, you're using Task.Run to execute synchronous code on a thread pool thread, but the same idea applies: the returned Task represents the execution of the delegate passed to Task.Run.

There's nothing magical about a Task instance. You can store the Task instance in a variable or whatever and observe it later:

public static async Task Main()
{
  Console.WriteLine("Starting the long-running process...");

  var task = Task.Run(() => LongRunningProcess());

  NextProcess();

  await task;
}