bloggers as kleptomaniacs

Kleptomaniac - a recurrent urge to steal

{They often steal items of trivial value. People with this disorder generally steal objects of little or no significant value. Some Kleptomaniacs may not even be aware that they have committed the theft} 

The longer I am a blogger the harder I find it is to come across original with my work. The more I read other blogs, the harder I find it is to stick to my own thoughts and to my own writing. I find myself often feeling like a Kleptomaniac with the blog posts that I write. They seem to be a combination of many other blogs post that I have seen around the blogosphere. This worries me.

This is why I have currently stopped reading a long list of blogs. A big change and a difficult choice. I now only read a small handful and mix it up every week. With so many blogs and so many writers I find it is a challenge to come up with original ideas for a blog post. As blogging is growing in leaps and bounds here in Australia it can often feel like just about every topic to do with motherhood, parenting or blogging has already been covered.

Now, I know we are all unique and have own on spin to put on topics and we each have our own voice but how often do you stop and think: 'That post reminds me of what .... just wrote.'

Let's say I decide to write a blog post about blogging. If I spend some time checking out some other blogs I will find that most of my thoughts are already covered. Some recent posts I found are:

Zoey wrote a post about Batch writing
Sarah wrote 9 effective habits for real girl bloggers
Kristin wrote about Is blogging becoming Un-fun?
Kevin wrote about Finding your niche

The temptation to take a small part of their thoughts and to expand on it for my own blog post, can in reality seem very small and insignificant in the scheme of things. However, I know that people are reading, people are watching and people are noticing that we may be very similar in our thoughts.

I don't mind if someone takes my thought or idea and expand's on it and links back to me. What I do mind is a straight copy and paste and a few changes of words to make it their own post. That is wrong!

I guess I am wondering: 

Do you notice if blog posts are similar?

Where do you decide to draw the line? 

How far is too far in copying a blog post?