I have a ball and i need it to rotate around itself in order to get the direction the player wants to move. then the ball moves and when it comes to a stop i need it to do the same. at the moment i an just using simple rotate and translate commands. My problem is that i can only either get 1) the ball to translate down a fixed axis (X) but it can rotate around itself or 2) translate along the x axis which i can rotate to any direction but it will only rotate around the first origin point. PLEASE GOD SOMEONE HELP ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, you will want to reset the position at the origin (0,0) for any transformations (rotations) then apply back to world space. This way you will only need to update your LookAt vector.
Then whenever you move, you will go in the direction of the LookAt vector from your world position.