Just want you guy's opinions really, What does the average hacker want?
Depends on the person. But if you have a powerful system, running servers, databases, you have lots of money and or you publicly disrespected hackers, you run a BUSINESS particulary involved with the government, military and politics yea I can see where they would be attracted to you.

I have done some reading about it, And it appears to me that most evil h4x0rs just want to use your computer as a platform to attack other computers or to perform illegal activities on the web via your IP addresses.
Thats more if the hacker wants to launch a DoS or a DDoS attack. You use the victims PC (zombie/bot) to do the dirty work with.

I have had a bit of a security scare recently, but it does not appear that many hackers are after actually getting to your documents? Or am I wrong in assuming that?
You are wrong in assuming that.
Some people have said its about learning which seems to be common, and some even leave little warnings about what they did.
It all begs the question, Why ME!
Do you run or have any of the following listed above? Perhaps, your system security is easy to breach and you just don't know it.

Just a thought.