Do you play as your Simself?

I usually start with my sim-self. I just started a new game a few days ago where I didn't just create my sim-self, but my family at the time I was a teenager, plus my neighbors, plus my best friend's family who lived down the street. I was trying to recreate everyone's houses as well, but trying to recreate a specific house in TS4 is enough of a headache that I ended up just using some downloaded houses. Most of these families are going to be unplayed anyway, so I don't need to worry about bills on a too-expensive house. I was also going to recreate some of the businesses from my town, but ended up using gallery stuff for that, too.