My Stance on Publishing

With the end of my first longer-than-a-short-story story in sight, the topic of publishing has come up in my mind more frequently than before. It's definitely something I should think about, and it's about the right time to do so. The issue is that I need to first understand what I actually think about the whole idea.
The way I see it, I have three options:

1. Seek publication from some sort of publishing house
2. Self-publish on e-readers (Kindle, Nook, etc.)
3. Upload to my website for free

 The way I see it if I do go the route of option #1 I'm not going to try very hard before moving on to option #2. Not because I'm one of those stubborn authors who believes that if their work isn't loved immediately then the publishers are evil and don't know what they're missing, but because as much as I am serious about writing I don't feel all that serious about going through too much trouble to try to profit from it.
"But Ryan, isn't it every aspiring author's dream to get published by a major publisher and make a living off of writing forever?"
Yes, and that would be very nice, but it's not why I write. I don't write because I want to profit from it, I write because I love to invent, plan, and create stories that interest me. Publication and economic gain is an afterthought, kind of like "well if I happen to be sitting on a pile of money, why not take some?" rather than "gee I had better find a pile of money". This is also justified by the fact that I am a college student with hopes of getting a degree and job in a field unrelated to my love of writing, so it's not like I'm depending on my writing to stay above the poverty line.

Now if only I could think of a title for this story.
-Ryan