The characters may have a degree of me in them, certainly they do or I couldn't be creating them, but they are not me. However, now that I think about it, even if I was writing myself into a scene, it would still be myself as a character rather than the totality of who I really am. Huh, convoluted.

Convoluted, but I completely understand what you are saying. I used my daughter as a model for a character in a novel (epic-length which is still in progress). As time goes by they move farther apart: 1) my daughter has grown up since then; 2) it was never really my daughter anyway, but only aspects of her, and the plot and the fictional character's choices distance them from one another as well.