I have a question about tenses because the more I run into this problem the more I question how much I even know about the English language and whether or not I was taught properly when I was a kid
Obviously you pick a tense and stick with it throughout the piece unless exceptions arise, but the more I write the more I feel like I run into exceptions that aren't actually correct? I show other people my work and they go "bro, your tenses are fucking all over the place" and I'm not even surprised.

Here's an example of a line I wrote that kept me up at night because I literally don't know if it's correct. "The man scoops a small drop of the bag's contents onto a single finger. It appeared to have the texture of wet sand." This was as it was the first time I wrote it. Naturally I'm aware that "appeared" should be "appears" as it refers to the narrator observing the subject for the first time in the present moment. But for some reason I also think that "appeared" in past tense is also correct, because the "state" of the object is and has always been that which is described? Am I fucking retarded? I can't even count how many moments like this I've had already.