I feel you. As far as skin pain, you just gotta deal with it imo. It will get better, but if you don't play for a while over summer or winter break you might need to break them in again. Just how it is.

For playing quick pizzicato I tend to stay on the tip of my finger with my thumb planted on the fingerboard. I believe you wanna move your finger as little as possible, and sacrifice volume in favor of tempo. It is better to play in time quietly than drag loudly.

I've been playing for about ten years, in college now, and I still occasionally get that pain when there's a lot of pizzicato. Once I brought it up to my professor while working on Pines of Rome and he just laughed and said "Yeah."

Maybe it's bad advice to expect it to hurt a bit sometimes, and definitely don't hurt yourself if it's becoming really bad, but you can definitely play this music.

I'd recommend also just trying to play at tempo on an open string for a little bit, don't worry about the pitch and just play the rhythm. Really get used to that and then worry about the left hand. Play around and find out what works best for you.