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If I had a voluntary gap like this and I put something like "Sabbatical" on my resume and made a few notes of how I spent my time I wonder how that would go over. The last time I was in the interview process I saw my interviewer as a kind of interviewing pro, it wasn't until I got hired that I realized he was just a guy and he had really only interviewed and on-boarded a handful of people before.

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I think that is pretty common on resumes and I've never heard anyone raise it as an issue. Some examples I've seen include "cycled across europe" and went back to school to work on a new degree, but then decided that they didn't like marine biology as much as they thought they did. There's no reason most employers would be concerned about reasonable life choices.

What employers are concerned about is people problems and problem people. Dealing with problem employees is very unpleasant and a huge time sink. Since difficult people tend to have difficulty staying employed, time gaps and short engagements on resumes are a somewhat reasonable heuristic. When there are more applicants than you can interview, you have to prioritize the list somehow.

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