If I were you I would stick to the third option.Keep using your cards even at a loss and hope for a better day to come.If we dont believe that a better day with a better coin price will become then we have to ask ourselves what we are doing in the crypto zone.
Running miners or not has nothing to do with believing. I let the system run already a few months with overcost. But at some point you can't justify to through anymore money out of the window. Because why overpay for crypto if you can just buy it cheap on a exchange?
I'm trying currently option 2, did 1 just for fun and as expected no stupid people around. Had only offers from pros and they were lowballing me (rightly so). Option 3 would be just waiting, but still miners would stay offline ;-)