writing in first person?

You have overall narrative tense: past or present, but then if you choose past tense, you'll still shift grammatical tense at sentence level: that's normal for telling story. E.g.,

Past tense:
I loved X (simple past), but had loved X for longer (past perfect). I was going to love X for even longer, if only X would tell me her name. I'd google it later. Now I just wanted to eat.

I love 1st pov. It's very intimate.

Read books written in first person to learn how to do it well. I suggest anything written before 1970. Recent stuff can be good, but it's rare. Old School writers tended to be better educated and better read. There, I said it.

One pitfall with 1st POV is you can end up with an over-use of "I" that can make the narrative sound like a long monologue so varying sentence is key.

I agree with reading lot of 1st POV stories to learn but that are a lot of good stuff post 1970s and recent, such as The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, also Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood, Enduring Love by Ian McEwan, Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney, The Girls by Emma Cline, The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley, My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite, The Wife by Meg Wolitzer, etc...

Elle. said:

One pitfall with 1st POV is you can end up with an over-use of "I" that can make the narrative sound like a long monologue so varying sentence is key.

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It's probably just as easy to overuse he/she or the character's name in third person.

I like to write in first because I feel like it's easier to get into the character's head. Others will disagree.

Go with your gut.

The best way to avoid sounding like an unending monologue is to tell the story: describe what happens, what is felt and observed etc. without reducing it to a series of actions.

Instead of writing:

I entered the room. I noticed a cat lying on the sofa. I love cats because they're so cute. I heard it purring and remembered, Soxie, the kitty I'd had as a child. I wondered if it would come to me.

You could write:

I entered the room. A cat lay on the sofa, purring the way Soxie, my childhood pet, used to. God, cats are adorable. Would it come to me?

Yes, as Roxxsmom said - avoid the filtering to make it more readable and intimate. Which is good advice for any POV IMO.

Gillhoughly said:

Read books written in first person to learn how to do it well. I suggest anything written before 1970. Recent stuff can be good, but it's rare. Old School writers tended to be better educated and better read. There, I said it.

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Bolded mine, and I would politely disagree. There's plenty of wonderful first-person contemporary fiction to love and learn from, here's just a handful of my favourites:

How the Light Gets In - MJ Hyland
The Hundred Secret Senses - Amy Tan
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
The House of Stairs - Barbara Vine
Chocolat - Joanne Harris
Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves - Karen Joy Fowler
The Paper House - Anna Spargo-Ryan
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood
May We Be Forgiven - AM Holmes
Anything by Marian Keyes
Sue Grafton's Alphabet series

Read Catcher in the Rye to get a better idea. Or read samples for third-person. You can search for either online.