Don't think too long

So I am sitting at my laptop again this morning instead of going out for a run.  I think I also should go to the grocery store and (blast) fold those never ending loads of laundry that seem to populate my dryer.  I need to vacuum the staircase and rooms upstairs.  I need to take the recycling out and I've gotten so used to trying to edit myself that I should go back to the beginning of this and re-structure every last sentence so they don't all start with 'I'.
I started a new story yesterday but the few words I got down took me a while.  First, it took me too long to get up and actually start writing.  I had that long list of things to do first (like always) that I was pretending were getting in my way.  Then while I was distracting myself I pretended to be working out a character sketch for the main female.  I had my blank page binder and wrote in all these traits for her.  She was working herself up into a nice little package.  I thought the male main character would be able to disrupt her quite well and that would make for some good conflict.  Then I actually sat down and started writing.
I don't know exactly how long that 650 words that stayed on the page took me.  It seemed like a very long time.  The entire list of character traits had nothing to do with what made it to the document and she isn't exactly that same image I thought she would be.  I also discovered there is something more going on with her about the cottage she comes back to.
This is supposed to be a short story.  It is a contest that was on the writing.com site about a summer romance that needs to be 1000 word minimum with a 5000 word maximum.  I thought even if I don't enter it into the contest (deadline is 7/31) I wanted to use the idea to get started on another story.  This gave me some parameters.  This gave me a thought and I'm going with it.  I am using the working title of Coming Home and when I first came up with it I didn't realize it was going to have more meaning to the main character.  Until I started writing her yesterday and she walked through the door.
So I have a main character that isn't exactly like the character sketch I started out with and there is another underlying thread with her that I didn't know existed.  Who is writing who?
Maybe I should go out for that run and think about it.
TT