OF – addons and classes
I tried these addons: Flocking, and Exploding String but I finally settled on Circle Packer.
Good things: I understand the classes and file structure pretty well (I think) and this structure makes more sense to me than the class set up in Processing.
Bad things: I think something happened to my empty example file because I kept getting super weird error messages – finally I just reopened my ball from last week and wrote over that sketch and the weird errors went away. AddOns: It took me a super long time to even get access to the AddOns. First, I was writing #include FOLDERNAME instead of #include .hFILENAME INSIDE THE FOLDER. Circle Packer didn’t have an src folder inside of it so I finally realized that I needed to make one and drag the files into the src folder before dragging and dropping. I also figured out how to change the path to be RELATIVE TO PROJECT rather late in the game. I was never able to use the Flocking addon because the path couldn’t be followed – even after I figured out all of the above (not sure why), but Circle Packer was working after I figured out the src folder.
I tried a lot of variations but I only managed to get one circle from Circle Packer to draw 
I think I am very close!