global consciousness

So I've been trying to drive traffic to this blog primarily through linking my comics and whatnot to a website known as reddit. Thus far it has been moderately successful. I've gotten a few views out of it but nothing major. The exposure depends heavily on your content being 'upvoted' by people who like it. The more upvotes the higher rated and more visible your content becomes. Sadly most of my content does not receive a huge amount of these upvotes, which is fine because it's hard to compete against the amount of brilliant content on that website with a few poorly drawn doodles.

So why am I writing this? Well I find myself in something of a personal dilemma. While browsing the interwebs this evening I did my usual round on reddit and discovered that some clever clog submitted a comic with the same idea and gag as one of my sketches that I'm currently working on.. Of course this is a complete coincidence, but when I saw how well received the content was on reddit I didn't know how to feel...

The comic is funny (obviously I would think that as I had the same idea) so I am glad to see it get so much exposure and many upvotes, but at the same time I felt (irrationally) robbed of any credit. Should I not just be pleased that my brain thought of a gag that if I had gotten to first would have made a lot of people happy? That should be enough. And I will have to learn to live with such feelings because I doubt it will be the only time it happens. In fact I'm sure that anyone who is trying to create anything original has suffered a similar scenario before.

Makes me wonder if we are all part of some global consciousness where we mutually share almost all our ideas. I'm sure many of us have had that 'I thought of that ages ago!' moment when we see a new product, concept or idea become widely known or commercially viable. I guess the difference lies in the ability for certain people to have the motivation to see their ideas through to a conclusion. Enthusiasm and commitment are commodities just, if not more valuable than original creative thinking!